


Adora and Catra and Gloom

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Catra (She-Ra) Leaves the Horde, Catradora finally kicks in!, Child Abuse, Cybernetic Prosthetics, Did I mention the gore is intense?, Drug Use, Gen, I didn't think it could get darker but HERE WE GO, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loss of Limbs, Netossa is a chav I'm sorry, Netossa now less chavvy by popular (two peoples') demand, Past Sexual Abuse, Physical Disability, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Surgery, Surgical Horror, Torture, Transphobia, Warnings May Change, We get to see King Micah die!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:24:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: What If... Shadow Weaver had a biological child of her own?Adora and Catra grew up alongside Tomb Gloom, Shadow Weaver's sickly son.  When Adora joins the Great Rebellion, she makes a sorrowful discovery about her weird little Horde-family that casts a long shadow over her new life.Chapter One: The life of Gloom.Chapter Two: Encounter at Plumeria.Chapter Three: The miracle at Seaworthy.Chapter Four: Visiting a friend.Chapter Five: The calm.Chapter Six: The eye.Chapter Seven: The storm.Chapter Eight: A new age of despair.Chapter Nine: The start of a rescue.





	1. The Unbowed Son

"Hard, hard, hard

for a weakling heart

for a wicked heart

to keep a face on it."

\--Owen Pallett, "[Spell for a Weak Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRG6kK-WQJA)"

* * *

 

It had been a nice and routine day, so of course Shadow Weaver stopped in the middle of her experiments with the Black Garnet to wander off, chasing something only she perceived. Tomb Gloom noted her absence and returned to the _Sapientia Maglorum,_ a potent source of fate and time spells.  It was a dense, rambling tome even by the standards of magic tomes written by madmen who were killed by gods, but the Long Night knew that Gloom needed all the fortune he could amass.

Weaver returned some time later--maybe ten or fifteen minutes, he wasn't paying attention to the clock. She had a little moving bundle in her arms--

"--Is that a baby?!" Gloom said.

"Yes," Weaver said. "And please, mind your voice. She's been through a dimensional aperture. She is fortunate to..." She considered her next words in light of her son's many conditions. "Ahem. She is fortunate indeed. Hordak himself was about to consign her to the rabble."

Gloom set his book on his reading desk and slouched to the baby with a little effort. She had gigantic, pale blue eyes and blotchy pink skin, a little lick of blonde hair peeking from her swaddling. "You can't seriously be adopting her. Is that what you're getting at?  You can't take care of a baby right now!  You're busy!"

"I was busy when I had you, too," Shadow Weaver said, holding the child close to her chest and touching his face. "Life continues ever onward regardless of what new life enters into it. Mastery of this eternal ebb and flow is part of the challenge of existence. Think of this: I won't be raising her alone. I have you."

Tomb Gloom considered his next words. "I will do the best I can," he said, meaning it, and trying to keep all his other thoughts well to himself.

"Please watch the child," she said, holding the baby out to him. "I must obtain supplies from the commissary."

"Yes, mother," he said, taking the child hesitantly. He waited for his mother to correct the fashion in which he held the little wriggling thing, because he knew he had to be doing it wrong. "Does she have a name?"

"She does," Weaver said. "Adora."

"Pleased to meet you, Adora," Gloom said, feigning enthusiasm.

He waited until Shadow Weaver was out of the chamber, and more, he waited for the door to snap shut behind her, before he spoke again.

The baby was breathing steadily; she wriggled in his arms. Everything moving properly. Everything shaped properly.  She was breathing without effort.  Her back had a gentle, natural curve, and flexed as she fussed in his arms.  
  
He lifted her head. She looked at him; he stared at her.

"I hate you," he said.

And at that hour he meant it.

* * *

One day, when he was sixteen and Adora and Catra were six, he realized there was a book missing from his library. In a panic, he ran--briefly, settling more wisely on a determined jog--to the sister he could tolerate the most.

Adora was reading in her bunk, a children's picture book classic: _Instructions for Spear Combat Techniques Against Larger Opponents_. She heard Gloom shuffling toward him well before he stopped at her and Catra's bunk and cleared his throat.

"Yes?" she said, batting her eyes at him.

It looked like Gloom actually needed to clear his throat, which surprised her a little bit. "I'm trying to find the _Testament of Carnamagos_. Have you seen it recently?"

"What's that one look like?"

"It's the one with the..." He coughed into his elbow. "Guh, that was a productive one..." He straightened up as best he could. His hump limited how tall he could stand. "The ray-skin cover. Dark green, kind of pebbly or rough? With the icon of the fetal skeleton etched onto it?"

"The scary one with the baby skeleton?" Adora said.

"Yes, that one," he said, nodding. "It's very important I don't lose it because there are a bunch of murder spells in it and mother needs it to help keep her youth."

Adora mimicked his expression and mouthed the word "mother." "Catra saw me reading and said she was gonna go look for a book too. Maybe she's got it."

Gloom sighed inwardly. Adora he had very hesitantly acclimated to. But Catra was a little shit. He hated her almost as much as his mother did. "Lead the way. If she has it... well, she'd better be treating it right."

Adora beat him to her, unsurprisingly. Catra was in a small side-hallway on the top step of a maintenance ladder, the _Testament of Carnamagos_ held at arm's length, an open bucket of red paint roughly below where she was holding the book.

"Ca- _traaa_!" Adora said, waving at her.

"Oops," Catra said, dropping the book. It half-landed in the can, knocking it over and spilling paint across the hallway.

" _Catra!_ " Adora said, running over to the fallen can. She grabbed the book by an uncovered corner and wriggled it out of the paint bucket, managing to only partially soak herself.  "How could you!  Gloomy was looking for it!"

"Come on, you _scared_ me," Catra said, climbing down the ladder on all fours like a descending kitten. "You saw me, I was so scared I dropped it."

"Gloom really likes this book and he's gonna be real mad!" Adora said, holding the book out by its cover and trying to drip paint from the pages.

Gloom finally rounded the corner, panting and sweating. "I better not have heard..." he said. He saw Adora shaking the Testament out, he saw Catra reclining against the ladder, he saw the paint everywhere, he saw the book. "Oh, _son of a bitch_."

Catra giggled. Adora stepped over to him gingerly, blushing and looking away. "I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't save the book."

He took the Testament, groaning. "I'll have to... I mean, there's ways." He took a handkerchief from his pocket and scrubbed paint from the Method of Revealing Passage Through the Long Night. "There's gotta be. We just have to clean it before mom finds ou--"

Shadow Weaver hovered into view at the other end of the hallway.

"--oh no," he whispered.

"Good evening," Shadow Weaver said. Her billowing skirt did not touch the walls or floor; the liquid paint rippled and spread with the malaise of her passage. "I see that a holy artifact has been defiled by a perpetual burden on our family. And the burden is smiling at me..."

"Yeah, well, Gloomy said a bad word," Catra said. She stuck her tongue out, and Shadow Weaver gestured. A red haze froze her in place, save for her eyes, which went wide.

"Hey!" Adora said, running to Catra, almost jumping at her. Shadow Weaver lifted her into the air, out of her grasp. "She didn't mean it!"

"Of course she didn't," Shadow Weaver said. "She took the tome by accident, brought it here by accident, arranged this scene by accident. Mocks me by accident. Were you not an able-bodied Hordechild, Catra, I would have no reason to keep you alive. But alas, you have been placed in my care."

"Hey," Gloom said, stepping forward. "The book's not--"

Weaver narrowed her eyes. "Tomb Gloom, is that any way to address your mother?"

"No, mother," he said. "It is not. I apologize." He bowed, deeply enough that it made him dizzy. "The book is not a loss. There are methods for cleaning it. This is just an annoyance, not a ruination."

"I am aware," Shadow Weaver said. "Adora, do you see that other paint can? The gray. See if you can open it."

Adora crept to the bucket and pried open the lid with a little prying-tool left with the brushes and pans and stuff. The gray can was almost three-quarters full. "What do you want me to..."

"Just bring it out from under the ladder, child."

"Yes, Shadow Weaver." She did so--it was a big bucket and quite heavy. Catra had pieced together what was going to happen, and closed her eyes tight.

Shadow Weaver upended Catra and gently dipped her head in the bucket, down to the shoulder, and held her there. Tomb Gloom winced and Adora whimpered.

Five seconds later Catra was still held under the paint. Bubbles began to pop on its surface.

"Shadow Weaver," Tomb Gloom said, "she's learned her lesson."

"Shhh," Weaver said.

Catra thrashed against her telekinetic cage to no avail.

"W... Wea.... You can't..." Adora said, the color leeching from her face.

"No," Shadow Weaver said, "alas, I cannot." She counted to three and lifted Catra out of the paint. Catra sputtered and spat and yowled. With a dismissive gesture Shadow Weaver threw her against the wall, leaving a bruise-like smudge of paint.

Adora ran over to Catra, who was fiercly licking her sleeve to get the paint off her tongue. She pulled off her overshirt and wiped Catra's face and hair.

Tomb Gloom held the painted Testament close to his chest. What was he going to say in a situation like this?

"Catra," Shadow Weaver said, "did that feel good?"

Catra spat against the wall. "No," she said, with the force of someone putting their all into a hideous curse word.

"It shouldn't. Remember: you are a magickat. Every magickat is, in their essence, a mindless beast of pleasure, chasing only satisfaction. You are a creature of sin, and when you die, and you will die in time, you will be swallowed by the yawning maw of the Nuclear Chaos and be punished for your inherent wickedness. If you ever learn to behave yourself, then perhaps you will have a life that will offer some comfort in that dark, hot place."

She turned away at last.

"Catra, Adora. Clean this hallway. You may sleep when the task is done. And only then."

"But Catra..." Adora said.

"That is no way to address your mother," Weaver said, and she was gone.

Adora hugged Catra and cried bitterly.

Catra gently pushed her off.  "We don't need to make a bigger mess, dummy."  She licked up her arm, still trying to clean her tongue.

Tomb Gloom flipped through the pages of the  _Testament,_ making sure they weren't stuck.  "I'm sorry that went down, Catra.  You're a mean little shit but... but that was one too much."

"It's okay," Catra said. "This won't be long at all.  Will it, Adora?"

Adora sniffled.  "Yeah."

Tomb Gloom tucked his tome under his arm. "Yeah," he said. "I think it'll be done in a flash." He flinched and commanded the poison flow. The suppurating wound in his wrist released a long stream of thick, indigo toxin that pooled in the paint, which popped and spit like hot grease spattered with water. "This will thin it out like nobody's business. Spread it around with a mop and bucket and it'll clean up, no problem. ... I'll... I'll get a bucket. See if I can't make something for your hai..." He coughed into his elbow again, spitting a wad of brackish phlegm into the red fabric of his sleeve. "Something for her hair. And... you know... the book."

Adora sniffled. "Thank you, Gloom."

Catra gave her a weak thumbs up. "Thanks, bro."

Tomb Gloom gave her a thumbs up in return. "No problem, sis."

It really was all cleaned up in under an hour. Catra dunked her head in a bucket of very, very, very diluted poison first, and even then she complained about numbness all through the mopping process. But...

Well, hell, she was just a stupid kid.  Of course she would.

Once he was done cleaning the _Testament of Carnamagos_  and hanging it by an air vent, he joined the girls in cleaning up, sparing more poison when needed, pushing the mop 'til he got winded, helping the girls carry buckets to the nearest faucet and drain.

When he finally went to bed, he felt like he'd been through a printing press. Everything was sore, his bones felt liable to split. His breathing was miserable.

Life in general was difficult. His mother had told him, again and again, that his frailty was a consequence of his talent, and was nothing to be ashamed of. He at least had his dignity, unlike the pathetic wretches Modulok manufactured in his laboratories.

Some days he would trade his dignity for being able to sleep more than four hours at a stretch. Today...

Well.

Today he learned that dignity had its perks, now and again.

* * *

One day in his nineteenth year, Gloom woke up on the eighth day straight of feeling worse than usual. The pain in his side had become pain in his sides. He climbed up from his bunk, shuffled toward the Black Garnet for benedictions, and stopped before he had made it a yard from his bed. He leaned forward and emptied his stomach onto the floor. He stared at the resultant mess, thought briefly of that day three years ago when Catra got on his mother's bad side, and his first thought was that he'd better clean it up before she found out.

The second thought was wondering if he'd somehow eaten a bunch of coffee grounds and forgotten about it.

He didn't make it to a clean-up station before he collapsed, unable to stand, barely able to breathe.

He came to on the slab in Modulok's laboratory-practice.

"...sallow skin," Modulok said, in the midst of explaining what was going on to Shadow Weaver. (He didn't miss much; the good doctor had mainly explained the obvious.) "And compounding this, it seems that your son's talent-tangent anatomy is reacting by overproducing toxins."

Gloom's consciousness was floating, like his brain was in a jar of water being gently rocked. But he realized he was now without a shirt. He felt an out-of-place burst of embarrassment over being exposed, even if his mother and sisters were fixated on the old, raw red scar over his heart where a toxic cyst had been surgically removed at birth, and the writhing, near-surface veins running from the scar up his shoulders and to his wrists. He could feel clouds of poison smoke rising from his wounds unbidden.

Modulok tutted. "I do believe that summarizes the depth and profundity of your son's suffering."

Modulok's other head, mounted on a body on the opposite side of the table, hissed. "Brought low. Too low. Weaver, why now, and not sooner?"

Shadow Weaver hovered behind the doctor's body tending to Gloom's front. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seating like a patient in waiting. "He has managed with medication and the energies of the Black Garnet. He has had no need for your sciences."

"Of course he hasn't," Modulok said. "Surely you have a fresh liver for him."

"Liver?" Adora said, in a harsh whisper.

"I could find one," Catra said. Her smile did not seem genuine.

"Liver," Modulok's second head said. "Both kidneys. Cartilage has utterly degenerated in his spine; bone grinds on bone. Spleen, dead two days. That--" One of his arms, which was crawling around on the table on its own accord, touched Tomb Gloom's arms, running its thumb along a writhing toxin-vein. "--is the result of sepsis. His talent has kept his death at bay for... ah. A week and a half..."

His other head continued. "I have heard that your son has been in pain that long. Why now? Why not sooner?" Six eyes trained on Shadow Weaver.

"I don't trust you, Modulok," Weaver said, crossing her arms. "I can see your desire. You want to ruin him."

"Ruination... Cybernetics do not interfere with sorcery. I've told you before..."

"You don't want to heal him," Shadow Weaver said. "You want to make him another Multibot. You want to parade him around like that bitch Mosquitor..."

"Watch your tongue," Modulok's first head said. "Mosquitor is our finest work."

"No _man_ of _her_ species drinks blood. She wants a powerful, masculine body, but that filthy organ she parades around is proof of what she really is. And you're proud of that wretch! You don't have patients, you have test subjects."  
  
"I make more whole only those who ask to become so," Modulok's first head said.

"I shall perform only what he wants done," Modulok's second said, "and nothing more. I am a doctor, Shadow Weaver, not a warlock."

Weaver squeezed her forearms. She closed her eyes.  "And I am his mother.  I will permit no reduction of his essential being.  He is my own flesh and blood and he will remain as such."

"Shadow Weaver?" Adora said.

"Yes, Adora?" Shadow Weaver said.

"Remember the last time Gloom got really sick? When he was in bed for like a month?"

"Of course I do."

"Me too..." Gloom said. His voice was reedier than he liked hearing.

"You told him... you told us... that he was the last gift from home. Your last connection to Mystacor, your home. You said he was born for greatness."

"Yes, child. I know my own words."

"He's dying, Shadow Weaver," Adora said.  "You're letting my brother die."

Shadow Weaver's expression was perpetually unreadable, though Gloom could see her eyes moving swiftly under her lids.

"We all want to see him become the man we know he can be," Adora said.  "But he can only do that if you let Modulok help him.  And... no matter what has to happen... it's just a few spare parts, you know?  He'll still be Tomb Gloom.  And he'll... you know..."  She wiped away tears.  "He'll still be with us."

Catra feigned a small laugh. "Plus... you _need_ another pair of eyes on me, don't you, Weaver?"

Shadow Weaver opened her eyes.

"Modulok," she said, "he will not be an enhancile. Give him the strength to stand tall. Not because you made a machine to stand tall, but because... you gave him... the means... to stand by himself. Do you understand?"

"I do," Modulok said, from both heads.

"Then do it, damn you." She turned from him. "So long as my boy returns to me." Adora went to her side, taking her hand as she left Modulok's practice.

Catra made a little gesture with her hands behind Shadow Weaver's back. She held out her pointer finger, bent like the upper curve of a question mark. With slow movements like incredible effort, she straightened her finger.

Modulok nodded.

"See you, Toomie," Catra said.

"Seeya," Tomb Gloom said.

The door shut.

"This gon' hurt, doc?" Tomb Gloom said, affecting an accent.

"Necessarily," one of Modulok's groins said. The good doctor arranged his many pieces into a form better fit for extensive, invasive surgery. "Anesthesia is the nectar of cowards."

* * *

If she were more like Adora, she would have kept the thought to herself, but Catra spent the next nine years of her life regularly reminding her older brother that the three weeks he spent recovering from surgery were three of the most peaceful weeks she'd ever had. It was the only time she ever remembered getting a little bit along with Shadow Weaver, the only time Weaver didn't ride her ass about everything she did wrong, or did insufficiently right, or tried to kill or hurt or starve or terrify her.

"Of course," Catra said to Adora that night, "it was still really, really gross."

The three weeks' peace had lasted a little longer than that; it took nine days after Gloom was back on his feet that Weaver reminded Catra that she was an evil cat monster who was super going to hell forever. But the peak of that experience, the one time she had seen Shadow Weaver happy, started the day she insisted Catra help her assemble that gross organ closet.

Shadow Weaver collected everything that Modulok took from her baby boy. With Catra's (hesitant, but for once understanding) help, she artfully splayed his baby teeth in a halo around his dried liver, his kidneys in symmetrical polymer cubes ringed by atherosclerotic veins, the spleen--

Oh, boy, Catra didn't want to think about the spleen and how it felt in her hands. But that shit was in there, too.

There was only piece of him that wasn't, and that was for good reason.

On that day, Shadow Weaver led her daughters to the recuperation deck where the most elite or moneyed of Hordesmen spent their time healing. The deck was clean, white-floored and -ceilinged, with abstract bright paintings on the walls expressing warmth and vivaciousness. Adora took point, the family gift to Tomb Gloom in her arms. Shadow Weaver stood behind her and Catra to the left of Shadow Weaver.

"That was 10:15, right?" Catra said. "Not 10:30 or noon? ... 'Cause I don't think there's gonna be a pre-show."

"Please, Catra," Shadow Weaver said.

Catra, for once, obeyed.

The door to room 891 opened, and Tomb Gloom stepped through.

Shadow Weaver cried. Adora heard it, Catra heard it, Tomb Gloom saw it. She had every reason to. For starters, her son was standing up straight.

If Weaver ever bothered landing, he might now stand a few inches taller than her, not counting the hair at full billow. Speaking of hair: his unbound hair grew long and straighter than hers, curling only near the tips. His ears were shorter and less tapered than hers, his newly vivid skin color now between her ashen gray and a more human pale. His eyes were glistening black. His toxin-spewing wounds were ringed by cybernetic vambraces.

"Good morning, mother," he said, smiling. "You're shorter than I remember."

After a long pause, Shadow Weaver said, "You look so much like your father. You're so handsome." She floated a step closer and touched his face. "You're unshaven. Who has been tending to you?"

"There's a drone," Gloom said. "It can do shaves, but I think it's with the same knife they use on rats."

Catra bit down a smartass comment.

"We made this for you," Adora said, raising up a bundle of maroon clothes.

Gloom's eyes widened. His heart pounded, and it didn't feel like he was closer to death by doing so. Bless that horrible, disgusting many-bodied abomination that tore him apart and stitched him back together.

He took the jacket and tried it on, then and there, with no help and hesitation. They were of the same style as his mother's, shades of red and black in stylish, asymmetrical patterns. The face-concealing mantle was replaced with a face-concealing hood; sewn into the back, rising like a small fin, was his old spine, the sharp curve rising above the fabric like a carrying handle.  
He lowered the hood over his eyes, stylishly.

"Tomb Gloom," his mother said, "swear to me that you will serve the Horde to the best of your abilities."

"'Til my last breath and further still," Gloom said. He flexed his wrists, and a cloud of poison rose from his cybernetic emitters. (They were enhancements to his projectors, by request. He would never tell his mother, who could be happy believing it was an effect from all his prosthetics.) "I feel like I could stomp a dozen princesses right here and right now."

"Hey, save some for us, alright?" Catra said, elbowing him in the side. Shadow Weaver shot her in the chest with a concussive bolt. "Hgk--" She doubled over, struggling for breath.  
"Don't. You. Dare," Shadow Weaver said. "Not so soon."

(Okay, there was that. But otherwise, Catra had a shockingly good rest-of-the-week.)

That night, when the family retired for the evening, Tomb Gloom checked in on his kid sisters.

"Hey, guys," he said, kneeling beside their bunk.

"Hi, Gloom," Adora said, smiling wearily.

"Break in the new back yet?" Catra said.

"Eh, not in a rush to do any more breaking," Gloom said. "I just--I mean--hey, Adora?"

"That's my line," Catra said, smirking. Adora pushed her head with her foot. " _Meeeeerrrrrr_."

He took out a couple of lactose-diluted theobromine ration bars from his fancy new jacket. They had cost more Hordemarks than he anticipated. "Here," he said, handing one to each of his sisters. "Thanks for saving me, Adora."

"I didn't sa..." Adora said, unwrapping her bar.

"You and me both know mom would be totally fine watching me die if it meant staying..." He searched for the right words.

"Staying the stock model?" Catra said around a mouthful of milk chocolate.

"Yeah. Thank you for pleading my case, Adora." He rest his head against the top of their bunk. "Maybe now I can finally do right by her. Not just... sitting in my bed half the time, taking up space, coasting on just being her son."

"You do good by her!" Adora said. "She loves you."

"Just for being here," Tomb Gloom said. "You she loves because you can... do... stuff. She picked you out 'cause she thought you were destined for greatness, and you've been doing pretty great. Me, she just... had." He sighed. "It's not right."

Adora offered him half of her bar. He waved her on. "You sure?" she said.

"I'm sure. I got enough reward today."

"I'll take it," Catra said. "I mean, I got shot, and I had to juggle your spleen."

"Oh, damn. What was that like?"

"Like... imagine a sponge... that's gone dry... but it's still like a wet sponge. Super gross. The worst."

Adora giggled.

"Laugh it up, blondie! All I'm sayin' is, next time he craps out his guts, it's your turn to polish 'em for Shadow Weaver's Gross Medical Prayer Closet."

"I'll wrestle you for it," Adora said.

"For it? So you wanna win it? I concede," Catra said.

They talked a while, joked, laughed, and Gloom said his goodbyes and let the lil' suckers rest.

He laid down in his bunk, on his back. He had been sleeping on his sides the last few weeks; he had to give his many bio-sutures time to meld into his skin, to leave his cybernetics ripe for tinkering if he should relapse in the night. Now, for the first time in his life, he could sleep on his back, staring at the ceiling, which may very well have been a map of a new territory, a sky that had more to it than moons and blackness.

How much of the Fright Zone had been blocked off to him by accident of birth?

How much of the world?

He breathed freely, the air at once chilly and warm in his chest. There was a faint taste to the air, one he'd hardly noticed before.

The future had been a tunnel, shuffled through one step at a time. The Horde had little use for someone so physically limited. The shackles were off.

He felt a pang of regret for words spoken once, nine years ago. Adora had never thought less of him for his debilities, unlike virtually everyone else he had met in his life. She never laughed at him when he failed physical test after physical test. She encouraged him to do more; and she had spoken in his defense when his body had finally quit on him.

He wiped tears from his eyes.

Whatever he accomplished from now on, he had a debt to Adora for enabling it. Bless that little yellow-haired orphan.

Bless his little sister.

* * *

Nine years later, he watched the suitcam footage of She-Ra standing triumphant among the burning hulks of Horde tanks, more real than everything around her.

"No," he said. Soft. Trembling.

"She's gone," Catra said. "Those goddamn Bright Moon rebels... they've done something to her. She's not thinking straight."

"We have to save her."

" _Bastet_ , man, do you even have to say it?"

"Well, it's what she'd say. You know?"

"Yeah," Catra said, looking away from the image of Adora's monstrous alter-ego. "She always was kind of stupid. Guess you have to pick up the slack."

He clenched his fists. Vulgar toxins flowed from his stigmata. "Nothing on Etheria will keep us from saving her. Nothing."

* * *

A few days after leaving her family behind and joining the Great Rebellion, Adora found she could not hope to get to sleep on her gigantic bed. After an accidental bed-murder, she stumbled out into the hall, draped with feathers, and stumbled into Queen Angella.

After thoroughly embarrassing herself, Adora said, "So, uh... what are you doing up?"

Queen Angella raised the mystic light hovering just above her hand. "When I feel the cares of the day weighing upon me, I come here."

Her light illuminated a stylized portrait of...

"...wha?" Adora said, stumbling back a step.

Angella smiled. "Simply a stylized portrait of my husband, King Micah. Nothing to be afraid of."

"That's..." Adora shook her head. "I'm sorry, that... he just reminded me of someone."

"Who, if I may ask?"

"My brother, Tomb Gloom. You wouldn't... oh, Hord... I mean, uh, maybe you do. He's been out fighting with the other Hordesmen for a while, ever since he got fixed up by Modulok." She held out her hands, indicating height. "Yea tall, black hair, has a spine on his jacket I sewed for him... son of Shadow Weaver?"

Angella stared at her.

"What did you say?"

"Son of Shadow Weaver. The Horde sorceress?"

The color drained from the queen's face.

Oh no, Adora thought.  What did I do?

"How... how old is he?" Angella said.

"Twenty-eight," Adora said. "Just this year."

The light dropped from the queen's hand, splashing into little round motes. They rolled away 'til one by one they vanished.

" _Micah_ ," she whispered. "My poor, wounded Micah."

In silence, the last of her divine bearing vanished, and she wept into her hands.

* * *

"And cancer put us in the ground  
And cancer grew up from our flowerbeds."

\--ibid.

 


	2. The Despairing Mother

"So once again

The way you feel will never, ever be the same."

\--Nine Inch Nails, "[Maybe Just Once](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6o3KXuoao)"

* * *

 

Glimmer yawned so hard her neck gently popped. "Aahh, man..." she muttered to herself as she teleported to the ground floor, "you know it's good sleep when your yawn's that strong."

She showered, changed into a fresh uniform, and blinked through the halls 'til she met up with Bow. "Hey, Bow!" she said. The two walked the familiar path to the war room. "How was last night?"

"Well, it went alright for me," Bow said. "But I heard there was some kinda blowup in the halls."

"An attack by the Horde?!"

"No, like, emotionally." The guards are all talking about how Angella's been cooped up in her room. She's been crying."

Glimmer's good feeling sank immediately. "That can't be good. That's the sort of thing that happens when someone reminds her about dad."

"But she talks about your dad all the time," Bow said.

"Yeah," Glimmer said. "When she's talking about how cool he was or how much we miss him. This is like..." She tried to find the right words. "The Horde did something really bad to my father. I mean, before... you know, before the other really bad thing they did to him."

Bow nodded. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"I kinda do," Glimmer said. "I never asked what happened, but... it had to be really messed up. I didn't realize it at the time, but..."

* * *

One fair night when Glimmer was six, she woke up in the middle of the night and made her way to the royal family's kitchen. In the years hence, she wondered exactly why she did. She remembered being thirsty, or hungry, but some nights looking up at her ceiling she wondered if she had just known that she was needed there.

She crept into their personal kitchen, moving behind counters in case a guard was around to send her back to her room. She felt pretty sneaky at the time, right up until she pressed flat against a counter and faced her father, seated at the dining table.

He was in his sleep clothes--back then, the forces of the Horde had hit the nadir, and their family had not yet gotten in the habit of going to bed ready to wake up and fight. He was staring into space. He had a kitchen knife in hand, resting across his lap. His face was blank, his eyes shining with tears in the dim light of the kitchen at night.

"Dad?" she said.

He blinked. His face lit up like he'd flipped a switch to "happy." "Hey, sparkles," he said, looking down at her. "Guess you can't sleep either, huh?"

"I was!" Glimmer said. "I just woke up. Is all."

"Lucky you," he said, and he meant it. "I came down here to make a sandwich, then I just sort of forgot what kind to make, and... well, there you found me." He gestured, making sure to keep the knife pointed away from her and him. "You hungry, Glimmer?"

She nodded.

"How 'bout peanut butter and... fluff?"

"The special marshmallow fluff mom said we can't just eat all the time?!" Glimmer said, eyes alive with sparkles.

"The same," he said. "It's a special occasion, after all."

"Is it?" Glimmer said.

"You caught me on a midnight sandwich run red-handed. It takes a lotta skill to sneak up on King Micah."

He prepared two peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches with that knife. It was dramatic overkill; Glimmer remembered how smooth that finely-ground blade could spread, how it fell through the loaf of bread her father had baked a few days before.

They ate at the kitchen table, Glimmer washing her sandwich down with milk, Micah with water. When they were done--and Glimmer finished the rest of his sandwich, which he hadn't eaten much of--he placed his daughter on his knee, patting her fluffy, sparkly hair. "Hey, Glimmer?" he said.

"Yeah, dad?" she said.

"You... and your mother... are the best thing that's ever happened to me," he said, and he swept her in a powerful hug. "I love you so much, sparkles."

"I love you too, dad~" Glimmer said, hugging back at full strength. She felt warm tears on her shoulder. He was faintly trembling. She cried too, happy tears down chubby, flushed cheeks.

The intervening years would see the Great Rebellion lose princesses, lose towns and cities, lose her father, lose the sense of safety that Glimmer had never consciously realized when she had it. That night, though, where she had saved her father from something, that feeling of safety, of protection, of belonging, of the being-at-home, was so strong she knew what it was at once.

Her father put her to bed, and she drifted off into what she remembered faintly as sweet dreams.

The next morning, of course, her mother chided them both on their late-night snack... but only a little.

* * *

Bow wiped away a tear. "Wish I knew him," Bow said.

"He was a great guy," Glimmer said, softly. "There's a lot of people I wish would be here today. Dis Pater, I wish he could've seen Adora."

They stepped through the vast, vaguely labial door to the War Room, and saw Adora seated in her father's chair. Or, well, sitting in, but she was face-down on the table, snoring loudly.

"Oh!" Glimmer said. "Hey, Ado..." She teleported across the room and at Adora's side. She shook Adora's shoulders. "Dude! Wake up!"

"Hffmuh?" Adora said, jolting upright. "I'm 'wake! I'm awake. Do you guys have any amphetamines or something becauuuuuse I didn't sleep last night...?"

"Didn't--" Glimmer said. "But that bed is like ten times more comfortable than my bed!"

"Maybe we shoulda made her some hot cocoa," Bow said. "Oh, hey Netossa, Spinnerella."

"Eyyo," Netossa said. "You see her just sittin' on His Majesty's chair like she was born in it? Un-be- _lievable_. The ovaries on this bint."

"Now, now," Spinnerella said, stroking her wife's shoulder. "She's new, and sleep-deprived, and she's a Horde refugee. Mistakes are to be expected."

"Yeah, yeah..."

"...but you two have been here, right?" Bow said. "Why didn't you tell her to switch seats?"

"'Cause she just sorta switched off the second she sat down and frankly it was hilarious... 'least without Angella here to see it," Netossa said. "Speakin' of, it's two minutes to meetin' time, which means she's ten minutes late, like, in a relative sense."

Glimmer led Adora to a neutral chair. She sat down, said, "Thank you," and set her head down and fell asleep.

"Bow," Glimmer said, "can you get some coffee?"

"You can teleport and you're in the place where you can teleport all day every day!" Bow said.

"Oh... yeah." She took a seat. "I'll get some after the meeting. Let her catch a few z's. A few's better than none, right?"

"Eh," Netossa said, gesturing vaguely. "Sometimes I'm like, oh boy a nap, and then I wake up and I feel worse than when I started, like, fuck you, Hypnos, you fuckin' traitor, I was counting on you and you fuckin' ran off to--"

The general of the royal army stepped into the chamber, helmet under one arm, a letter in her hand. "It is with a heavy heart that I announce that the queen has declined to attend this meeting owing to recent personal discoveries weighing heavily on her conscience," she said, reading the letter aloud.

"Huh," Netossa said.  She put her hand on her wife's hand.  "Is she dyin'?"

The general shook her head.  "No.  She's merely... ah... in a bad place for leadership."  She resumed reading the letter: "In her stead I deliver a message: the kingdom of Plumeria has reported an attack. As Plumeria is located near the front lines, it is of strategic importance to defend. The Rebellion is to provide food and supplies to Plumeria. If necessary, engage the Horde to secure the--"

"What?" Netossa said.

"What?!" Glimmer said.

The general took a deep breath and restarted: "If necessary, engage the Horde to secure the safety of Plumeria's people and its goodwill towards the Rebellion. Please exercise your good judgment, everyone." She folded the letter. "Do we have any proposals for how to handle the mission?"

Spinnerella bat her eyes at her wife. "Perhaps they could use our help?"

"I... guess..." Netossa said.  "Cripes, been a million years since we been on the offensive.  I could stand to give a beatin'."

"Speaking of," Bow said, "if it's not too early to ask, remind me what your talent is?  Because I've got this strategic operations simulator I'm working on."

"Later.  Glim-Glim looks like she's about to explode, so, well, want us taggin' along?"

Spinnerella softly pumped her fists and mouthed "Say yes, say yes" over and over.

"Well!" Glimmer said, popping out of her seat and speaking loud enough to stir Adora in her sleep. "I was thinking that since it's so close to the front that we should, uh, like, maybe instead of sending a bunch of people, just a little fireteam to do the thing!"

"Three? Oh, right, you got the She-Ra with you. You got this." Netty glanced at her wife, who sighed but gave her a thumbs up.  "Thumbs up.  Good luck, kids."

"Awesome!" Glimmer said.

"I mean," Bow said, "three's a good solid number, like, most of the time, but if your mom wants us to actually fight..."

"We can get Perfuma on our side while we're there," Glimmer said. "She's really strong, she can clean house like nobody's business. And Adora can go as She-Ra and show off how cool and strong she is!"

"Huh, well, when you put it like that," Bow said, "that actually sounds pretty winnable! Alright, I'll check the cart, you get coffee, and we'll start the greatest adventure of our entire lives!"

"Yeah, we got this!" Glimmer said, giving Bow a high five. The noise got Adora's head off the table.

"hbwh whas happen?" she said.

"We got a mission, Adora!" Glimmer said.

"coo'" Adora said, and went back to sleep.

* * *

Eight hours later, Tomb Gloom chewed a piece of kola-nut-enhanced caffeine and theobromine ration, letting it melt on his tongue before swallowing. He was posted in a watchtower at the edge of the facility, the air conditioning on full blast to battle the wet heat of the jungle.

He checked his communicator. "Test," he said. "Any sign of incursion?"

"Sir, no sir," a Hordesman responded--he forgot who. Iosef? "Guard change in two minutes."

"Alright. Carry on." He shut his comm off and stared out the window at the Plumerian jungle.

It had been an utterly dull few days, which were normally some of his favorite days on patrol. But knowing that Adora was out there in the cruel grasp of the Princess Rebellion weighed on his thoughts like a tick on the lower back. He could feel the knowledge there even when he was actively ignoring it, and it was draining and infecting him simultaneously. He had thought about abandoning his post every few minutes--just call up Catra and get a search-and-rescue together.

But the Plumerian deterraforming plant had to be defended, and it needed his expertise to successfully kill the Heart Blossom's connection to nature. Once the Blossom was exposed and Plumeria stricken, the pacifists would either readily fold or die like vermin, and either option was fine by him. Then they'd plug the Blossom into their burgeoning runestone network and add its power to theirs. And his mother would become more powerful... and he would, too.

So she said, anyway, and he had no reason to doubt her. He'd spent enough evenings watching Adora while his mother plumbed the Black Garnet for its hidden wisdom to trust she knew what she was doing.

Later, he would look back and wonder why he made his next decision. He was bored. He was suddenly full of energy. Maybe he was worried about the deterraformer; it was a precision instrument, after all, and anything could go wrong. He wondered some nights, staring at the ceiling that had long ago lost its wonder, if he had just known that he needed to be there.

* * *

After a standard-issue guard-uniform-snag-and-replace gig, Adora tried to calculate out what possible thing she could be facing in the main facility. The Horde had plentiful machinery designed to ravage Etheria's environment. If it were the type-1 atmospheric degenerator, taking it down would be easy. Really, most of them were easy to shut down at a moment's notice (for obvious reasons, i.e. "it would be terribly inconvenient for us if our air were replaced by heavy metal particulates"). All except...

Adora gasped.

The crazy bastards had built a type-3 defoliant injector. The massive machine, sporting four bubbling tanks of type-1 slime medium, sat in the middle of the room, pumping toxins into the roots of the Heart Blossom.

"The Horde _is_ poisoning the land," Glimmer said in disbelief, doffing her helmet.

"Well," Bow said, "guess we gotta... okay, blowing up sounds like a bad idea."

"Oh, boy, is it ever," Adora said, taking her own helmet off. "This one's got a triple shutdown mechanism and two redundant power cores. ... Think we can talk some of the guards into helping with the other five things we have to at the same time so we can--"

She felt a familiar presence behind her.

"Adora?" Tomb Gloom said.

Her heart sank. She took a breath and turned around. "Hey, Gloomy."

_Oh, Horda--I mean--whoever I'm praying to now, I needed more sleep for this._

Glimmer and Bow turned to face Adora's brother. Glimmer gasped.

Adora saw her brother in a new light. His familiar face was suddenly alien, suspect. His brow was furrowed, his lips pursed, his arms akimbo. Inky poison linked from the emitters in his vambraces. "I see you brought some new blood into the Horde. Thanks a lot. We can always use more recruits."

"Hate to break your heart, but we were going to sabotage the injector and save Plumeria from devastation."

"Treader of Dust," he swore. "You've bought it all, haven't you? Not even a week and you're eating out of their hands like a dog."

"Hey!" Bow said. "You ask yourself if poisoning an entire country is something a good guy would do!"

"Bow..." Adora said.

Gloom raised his arms, switching from liquid to gaseous poison. Smoky clouds gathered over his head. He took a step into the facility. "Poison is who I am," he said. "It's a gift from the Black Garnet. Remember what mom used to say, Adora?"

"'Poison, like medicine, is in the dose,'" Adora said.

"These useless nature-worshipers need to be freed from their ridiculous cult, and the Heart Blossom is at its core. Once we break its spirit, we'll lash it to the cause, and teach it how to do its job properly, just like the Black Garnet. You're keeping them in the nursery, away from true freedom!" He pointed at Adora. "Shadow Weaver taught us that, or have you already forgotten?"

"Gloom," Adora said, taking a step forward herself, "the Horde taught us that so we wouldn't have trouble conquering people and taking their homes from them--taking the planet from its own people.  They built us to be conquerors and I don't want to be one anymore."

" _You_ built me most of all," Gloom said. "If..." He choked on his words. "If you'd have known... it came to this... would you have spoken up to Shadow Weaver that day? Or would you have let me die?"

"I don't want you dead, Gloom," Adora said, fighting back tears.

"You're a better person than this, Adora," Tomb Gloom said, aiming at Glimmer. He clenched his fist, and saw her face, and felt a pang of deja vu. There was something in her face, something in the volume of that ridiculous hair, that distracted him long enough that Glimmer teleported out and reappeared five feet above his head. She landed on his crown feet first. "hbuh" he said and fell to the ground, knocked out. Glimmer landed heavily beside him.

"...did he say you're better than wanting him _alive_?" Bow said, nudging him with his boot. "...Is that a real spine?!"

"It's his own," Adora said. "Long story."

"You know what else is a long story?" Glimmer said, stammering. "Why the _fuck_ does he look like my dad?!"

"Yeah, that was on my--" Bow said.

"Hey!" a Horde trooper said, leveling a type-1 suppression weapon at Glimmer. "You're not one of ours!"

"And now I'm about to be shot," Glimmer groaned.

[A horn sounded somewhere in the near distance.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGocPHsc8Ls) The Horde trooper turned to investigate, and saw a slithering mountain of vines topple one of the wall segments. Perfuma stood astride it, shouting her intent to kick ass and take names until all names were hers and no asses remained unkicked (not in so many words). The Hordesman stared in shock at his impending ass-beating, allowing Adora to smash him in the bakc of the head with the pommel of the Sword of Protection.

"Somebody, secure Gloom," Adora said, drawing the Sword of Protection. "I've got some business to take care of." She rushed into the ensuing hippie fracas.

Glimmer looked over her shoulder. "We're taking him with us," she said, glowering at Tomb Gloom before rushing into the fight herself.

Bow checked his stolen uniform for handcuffs or something like it. He found exactly that in one of the inventory slots, and jangled them for emphasis before kneeling over the kayoed Hordesman. He rested one of Gloom's arms on his back, went for the other, and got a faceful of poison gas. He fell back, gasping for breath and wiping a flood of tears pouring from his stinging eyes.

"Dammit!" Tomb Gloom said, fighting off his concussion. He had to fight. He had to lay out Adora and drag her back home to get her looked at, fixed, remind her where her family was--  
She-Ra smashed her way into the deterraforming center.

Tomb Gloom stood transfixed in sheer horror at the sight of her. She was eight feet tall--at the least--her hair like a second cape billowing behind her in the absence of wind. She had presence, weight, and...

The recordings had done no justice to her reality. Salitter emanated off of her in a golden glow. Her sword cut through the air itself, making a steady droning shriek like a fork scratching glass. Muscles taut like steel cables flexed under inhumanly flawless skin. She was a statue come to life, a god in the flesh, a Platonic ideal form rotated from a higher dimension into this fallen place.

She fixed her gaze upon him and he felt like an ant in the shadow of a descending boot.

He stumbled against the wall, and watched in helpless terror as she leapt onto the deterraformer.

"For Etheria," Adora said, her tone low and even, and stabbed her hyperreal sword into the toxification matrix. A wave of mana washed down the machine, a noise like a woman singing accompanying her black magic as it neutralized his poison enchantments all along the roots of the Heart Blossom's worldtree.

It was all academic after that. He got away, though things got a little hazy--he remembered centuries of plant growth erupting around him in seconds, he remembered the stench of roses heavy around his neck. His good sense returned to him on a skiff racing out from the destroyed deterraforming center, and realized the smell was coming from a lei growing around his neck. He ripped it off and soaked it in poison, throwing it behind the fleeing craft.

Lonnie stumbled onto the guard rail, panting. "Did you freakin' see that?!"

"See what?  I barely made it out of the green inferno back there," Gloom said, wiping his brow.

"She just--she--what in the wet red hell was that?!  I thought princesses were, like, on that pink one's level.  That was terrifying!"

"The 'pink one' knocked me out cold," Gloom said.  "The lesson here is not to underestimate them."

"Duly no..." A lightbulb went off in Lonnie's head. He could see the look in her eyes. "...hey, wait a sec."

"What?"

"She had..." She framed her face with her hands, indicating a certain jawline. "And..." She fluffed her hands around her head. "You know--the hair.  Like when you're out of the shower but you ain't dried your hair yet."

"What are you getting at...?" Gloom said.

"She kinda looks like you, guy."

Gloom stared at her. "No way. No _absolute goddamn_ way."

* * *

After settling things with Perfuma and securing Plumeria's alliance, the team returned to the capitol to rest and enjoy the sudden intense bounty of food. (Or at least the bounty of food that they'd brought to Plumeria which was 1) no longer necessary for their well-being and 2) had things apparently alien to the Plumerian palate, like "savoriness" and "not-kale.") Adora took a basket of fruit into a tent and fell asleep immediately on a pile of flower petals. Bow and Glimmer sat on the food cart and engaged in friendly, light-hearted discussion about the day's events.

"You 'lost track' of the guy who looks like my dad?!" Glimmer said, throwing down her canteen. "He was right freaking there!"

"It's not like I let him! I had him pinned down but then he squirted me in the face--" Bow blushed and adjusted the positioning of his legs. "Phrasing. Sorry."

"Aaaaaagh!" Glimmer said, turning away and trying to will away the mental image. "You just made it way worse!"

"I'm sorry, Glimmer!"

"You can be sorry when you're _in the grave!_ " Glimmer shouted, pulling her hair. "Ahhh, dammit Bow, I'm sorry. I'm... just... aaagh. Today has sucked incredibly."

"Hey, at least we beat the Horde," Bow said, patting her on the back. "Plumeria's secured and we kicked some ass.  And your mom was okay with the ass-kicking!"

"Man... I hope she's feeling better."

Queen Angella landed in front of the fruit cart, kicking up a cloud of dust with the beating of her majestic wings.

Glimmer sat up straight and wiped fruit juice from her mouth. "Hello, mom," she said, waving.

"Glimmer," Angella said, looking around at the thriving jungle growing around the capitol. "You've done exceptionally well."

"Well..." Glimmer said. "Adora did a lot of the hard stuff. And, uh... we did kinda... well, it's nothing. We got right what we had to get right."

"You're very brave," Angella said, stepping forward and sweeping her daughter into a hug. Glimmer made a startled squeak. "You are so very brave, my little starshine..."

Bow inched away, sensing it was something that deserved space.

Glimmer returned the hug. Her mother's translucent feathers tickled her wrists even through her gloves. "Thank you, mom," she said.

"I love you," Angella said.

"I love you, too."

Her mother let go, letting out a shuddering sigh. "Perfuma... I have questions to ask of her. Do you know where she is?"

"Yeah."  Glimmer braced herself and said, "I saw him, mom."

* * *

Twelve years ago, Angella had woken from fitful sleep to find her husband was not in bed. She rose from bed, raced for the door, and Micah opened it a moment before her hand grasped the knob.

"Hey," he said, smiling.

Angella breathed a sigh of relief. "Were you far?" she said. "I'm sorry. Sleep has been poor tonight."

"Bad sleep is going around," he said, stepping through the door. He gently kicked it shut and took his wife in his arms, kissing her. "Did you know that we have a wonderful daughter, Angella?"

"I do," she said, coyly sliding her hands down his side to his firm ass. When she felt him stay steady, she gave it an affirming squeeze.

"I made her a sandwich you told us not to eat so much of," he said. "But she earned it. She helped me out tonight."

Angella tilted her head, faintly, before realization dawned. "What happened?" she said, now touching his face.

"I..." He gathered his strength. Angella helped him back into bed. "I just... it was... one of the memories. You know the ones."

She nodded. He had them quite regularly; that was a secret between himself and Conifor, one she was glad to let them keep.

"Well... I had one... and I sat up in bed, feeling you next to me..." He rested his head on her shoulder. "And I thought, you know, I'm just getting in the way. If I ever see her again, I don't know what'll happen. I can't guarantee my family's safety. I can't guarantee my friend's safety. What good am I? Just some idiot who can do magic tricks, married to the Morning Star."

She stroked his face and let him speak.

"So I sat there... knife in hand... thinking really hard about how nice it would feel... and she was there. Glimmer was there. And it all went away." He kissed her clavicle. "That sweet little angel. Every time I see her I just... know.  I just know that my life is mine and she couldn't take it from me. And... hell, if I made her, it means I've done some good.  I _can_ do good. As long as I can do good by her."

"You're so strong," Angella said. "You're so brave. You're the best of us."

"Because I have you," he said.

They kissed; they made love, proficient and vigorous and joyous.

Four years later he was gone and everything fell apart.

* * *

Perfuma dipped her quill in her inkwell and continued writing in her journal:

"Then the She-Ra fell asleep while I was talking to her.  It was frightening, but Glimmer assured me it was just what she was doing today on account of a dire lack of sleep for very personal reasons.  (The She-Ra is sleeping now and is hopefully going to be very happy about it.  I wonder if she'll be glad I helped her sleep?  I must ask when she wakes up.  I will ask if she would like to go to the Princess Prom.  But would that mean un-inviting Bow as my second?  No, Glimmer is going, so clearly"

There was a knock at the door.  She turned, all smiles, and said, "The door is unlocked!  Please come in!"

Queen Angella stepped inside Perfuma's royal cabin, wings tucked tight against her back. "Hello, Perfuma," she said. "It's been too long."  She was smiling, but not convincingly, and her brows were gently furrowed.  She was gently bowed, not from a low ceiling (it was plenty high) or from the weight of her wings (they were magical and not very encumbering), but from a spiritual burden.

"It has been, _nostra alma Mater_ ," she said, standing and bowing. "Thank you so much for sending the She-Ra to the aide of the kingdom! She is more beautiful than I could have ever dreamed... and, ah, very strong, too."

Angella crossed her arms. "Perfuma," she said. "I need you to take me to the Crystal Falls. My heart is heavy. My soul is aching. And I need clarity of thought."

"O-of course," she said. "I can do so tonight, if need be."

Angella looked away from her. "Did Conifor ever tell you about Micah?"

"About his sessions at the Crystal Falls? Of course not," Perfuma said. "It would be a violation of their trust."

"...has Glimmer told you about the man she saw today, working for the Horde?"

"Yes, actually," Perfuma said.  "She was very concerned because he looked a great deal like her father, and..."  She pieced together the connection--what Glimmer said, how Angella was carrying herself, memories of King Micah visiting her father.  "...oh."

"Perfuma," Angella said, "when my Micah was a child, the future Shadow Weaver took him on as a protege.  She..."  There was nothing left to do but say it.  "She raped him, again and again, while he was under her tutelage.  This man... this warrior of the Horde..."  She felt the tears flowing and she hated to be so vulnerable, so far from home, before someone she had known as a child, whose parents had given her family and her cause so much and whom she could not protect.  "He is Micah's son by his abuser."  She trembled.  "And being here is all I can do to keep from... from flying to the Fright Zone... and freeing him myself."

The words hung in the air like bombs in freefall.

"I," Perfuma said, "will put on some tea.  And then, the healing can begin."

* * *

"Look at me

And tell me 'love's not such a hard word anyway."

\--Ibid.

 


	3. Our Daughter of Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flashback in this chapter (starting after Catra's comment about her bones) is a sequence of sexual assault. Skip over that section (contained entirely within that pair of line breaks) if you'd rather not read it for any reason.

"And of all the promises that I have made

There's one I'll never break"

\--Owen Pallett, "[Lewis' Dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cybl17_zRBU)"

* * *

 

Adora struggled to open her eyes. "Are we still in Plumeria?" she said.

"Well," Bow said, "you walked out of your tent and you followed the smell of the campfire smoke, and that was about... fifteen feet?"

"Fifteen and a half," Glimmer said.

"So yeah, you're still in Plumeria."

"Hooray," Adora said.

"How could you drink that much and not die?" Glimmer said.

"I'm alive?" Adora said. "Dammit."

"Here," Glimmer said, holding out something that smelled amazing: a sweet potato slathered with rich goat butter. "Try and sober up."

"I really shouldn't," Adora said, "my stomach's killing me." She ate it in around a minute. "Uuurgh. I'm gonna regret that," she lied.

"Good morning," Queen Angella said, terrifying everyone, especially Adora. "Ah, sorry," she said. "We returned here last night. It seemed to be a good idea to let you sleep."

"Hello, mighty She-Ra!" Perfuma said. "It is a humbling and grounding sensation to see that even the She-Ra can become painfully hungover. May I interest you in some aspirin tea, or perhaps opium tea?"

"...do you have any marijuana?" Adora said.

With a soft poof a wreathe of aromatic herbs appeared around her neck.

"Yes," Perfuma said.

" _You're my favorite princess,_ " Adora said, crying profusely through closed eyes. "I'm going to light up a little, and then I'm thinking we can go home."

"I second this," Angella said.

They weren't long for Plumeria. The queen said nothing about her experience at the Crystal Falls.

* * *

A few days later, after Adora had caught up on her sleep at last--Glimmer had reasoned that a bed more like one she was used to would help her be comfortable enough to sleep, and blessedly she was right--the queen called the team for a meeting in that enormous war room. It was just them and the queen that morning. Adora made sure to not sit in her husband's chair this time.

Angella broke the silence. "Glimmer," she said. "Bow... and Adora. Years ago, my husband said to me, 'Grief can be a sail, or it can be an anchor. And I am through drowning.'" She tapped her fingers together and bowed her head. "I have lost lovers before; my life is long. But Micah was perhaps the man I have loved the most, and his absence... it agonizes me, even now.

"This, I believe, is why it is imperative we not try to capture Tomb Gloom."

Glimmer shot a glance at her friends: _can you believe she's still doing this?_ But while Bow was sympathetic, Adora simply nodded at her mother.

"Wait, really?" Glimmer said. "You're okay with this? He's your brother! And apparently mine, too!"

"Yeah," Adora said. "And my... and Catra is still with the Horde, too. Going into the Fright Zone like we are now, just to smash and grab my brother and Catra? There's no chance."

"Hey," Glimmer said, "I can teleport at will!"

"'Til you run out of energy," Adora said. "And the Fright Zone grows traps and calves monsters without anyone telling it to. It's an evil place and I can only say that now that I'm not there and under Hordak's thumb. We just... We just have to keep doing what's right, and lead by example. They'll come to us, and it'll be..."

"...a long-awaited introduction," Angella said, picking up where Adora had faltered. "Please, don't put your lives on the line to free someone of personal import when you could save so many others. You won't be saving them in lieu of our absent friends. You will simply be saving the more directly endangered ahead of the ones we know are strong enough to make it to the end."

"Alright," Glimmer said. "I understand. But if the chance comes up and it's not completely insane... well, I promise I won't overexert myself, but I won't not-try."  
Angella pursed her lips, took a breath, and said, "I can't stop you. Just, please. Use your better judgment, Glimmer. I want all of my children to see this war to its end."

* * *

Two weeks passed.

* * *

Catra dry-heaved over the edge of the boat. "Fuck me," she said, "why a boat?"

"Can't exactly get to Seaworthy by hiking," Tomb Gloom said, pacing in a circle with a chalk holder on a stick, drawing an enormous circle on the deck. Good thing this was a hoverdread, if it were actually riding on the waves this would be a lot more obnoxious.

"Man, I just love boats," Scorpia said, gesturing out to the sea. "Wind in your hair, ocean on every side, miles and miles from the nearest dry land..." She sighed rapturously. "God, I could just commit some watermurder right here and now."

Catra turned an interesting shade of green and emptied her stomach overboard.

"Woah, dang!" Scorpia said. "Hey, somebody get me some water over here? Like, drinking water."

"Here you go, Force Captain!" Kyle said, offering his canteen.

"Thank you kindly, Kyle. You're such a good kid." She pat him on his head; he flinched, awaiting certain death from her gigantic pincers. "Here you go, kitty."

Catra mumbled a thanks and cleaned her lips before swishing a mouthful around to clear out the last of the bile. " _Uuggh._ "

"Careful talking about water murder around Catra," Gloom said, resting his chalk stick on his shoulder. "There was an incident when she was younger. She's been gun-shy about any water deep enough to... well, you get the picture. Look at her."

Catra sat on the deck, back against the railing, chugging the contents of the canteen.

"Incident, huh?" Scorpia said. "Poor lil' kitty. What happened? Didja fall in a well? Did Octavia beat on you? Oh, wait, it was the other way around, wasn't it? Are you wracked with endless guilt over how you partially blinded Octavia?"

"Shadow Weaver tried to drown me in a paint bucket," Catra said, throwing the empty canteen aside. Kyle snuck as close as he dared to retrieve it.

"Oh," Scorpia said. She twiddled her claws. "That's rough."

"Very," Catra said.

"Mom's always been hard on her," Tomb Gloom said, walking over to them. "Like, really hard. I think she's got something against magickats."

"Tch," Catra said. "Clearly she loves me best. She wouldn't try and kill me so often if she didn't secretly wanna jump my rubber kitty bones."

* * *

It had only been a month after passing his first physical trials, at long, long last. Tomb Gloom had no problem training with people half to a third his age; he was learning quickly, and once he caught his footing he had no problem overpowering the younger, less-developed students around him. He was told by his instructors that this was a valuable skill he was developing simultaneously, a commendable side effect of starting his physical studies at such a relatively advanced age.

He had never felt so strong, breathed so easily. Even sorcery was coming more easily to him, able to carry on longer rituals without having to take numerous breaks, able to even attempt some of the more endurance-heavy Great Works. In fact, that day, he remembered he had been working on the Method for the Calling of the Hounds of Tindalos. He had finished carving notches in one last B.O.N.E.G.R.E.N.A.D.E. before realizing that he had worked up quite the sweat with the assorted pre-rituals, and asked if it were possible to shower before they completed the primary rite.

His mother had acquiesced immediately, and he had left for the nearest shower. He'd earned some extra shower credits for flushing out vermin that had been stealing discarded rations, and he decided to use one, taking a luxurious ten-minute shower with hot water and soap with a faint but present patchouli scent.

He stepped out into the locker room and toweled off. He imagined hearing the servos in his new spine whisper and grind as he flexed, but it was almost certainly his imagination. He turned to face a shadowy corner and stopped cold when he recognized the white eyes staring at him from the shade.

He gasped in shock and held his towel against his chest. "Old Gods, you gotta warn me before you--"

"Shh," his mother said, gliding over. "I gave birth to you, boy. There is nothing you have to hide from me."

She'd told him this before--usually after catching him staring at a Hordesman his age he had no chance with, or when he was a second too slow in answering what he was doing in his bed after lights out. He had never heard her say it so...

...warmly.

She had floated across the distance and put her hand on his towel. "Let go, son. I must see."

He held still.

"Gloom..." Shadow Weaver said.

He closed his eyes and relented, dropping the towel to his feet. He took a step back, forcing his arms to his sides.

He felt his mother's presence loom closer. She touched his face. "You look so much better clean-shaven," she said. "You have a beautiful face. So young, vibrant." She slid her hand down his neck, down his shoulder, and onto his chest, resting on his scar. He shuddered. The sensation was like probing the pulp of a newly-pulled loose tooth.

"For all Modulok did to you," she said, "he left this alone."

"Please stop touching it," he said.

She did not. "Why didn't he fix it, Gloom?"

"He said it wasn't hurting me," Gloom said. "And he liked it. Said it showed character. And I was, well, I was already hurting a lot, I didn't want to add something else for him to do."

"Of course he likes it," she said, stroking his chest. Her hand brushed against his nipple, and he cringed in shame.

"Please..." he said. "Please stop..."

His mother pressed her body against him. He didn't look, but he heard her breath behind her mask, felt the weight of her gaze on his face.

"Forgive your mother," Shadow Weaver said. "You're just so... handsome. So very much like your father. It has been so very long and this old body has needs..."

He chanted litanies in his head: _please don't, please don't, please don't, please don't. Treader in Dust stay her hand, Walker on the Wastes chill her heart, Black Goat rescind your blessing. Somebody help me._

She removed her mask; he could feel her hot breath on his cheek, and she kissed him, not like a mother would, but like a lover.

"Forgive me," she said. "I just needed a taste." He heard her mask latch onto her face, and her presence moved, and he lunged for his towel and wrapped himself tight. "I'm just an old pervert who needs to satisfy herself now and again. Embarrassing as it may seem, there is so very little in the Fright Zone which is beautiful. You, Tomb Gloom, are perhaps the most handsome man here." She huffed. "Or would you have me settle for someone else?"

He struggled to say what he thought and said instead "You must conduct yourself how you believe is best."

"Thank you, Gloom. Truly you are your father's son. Don't be long, now..."

She left the locker room.

He sat on the nearest bench and felt the last of his strength leave him. He curled up, legs squeezed tight together, arms crossed over his chest, [and wished that Adora had let him die](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NXCHbzAXvw).

* * *

"Gloomy?" Catra said, touching his shoulder. He was aware now that he was sitting against the railing next to Catra.

"You okay?" Scorpia said, kneeling in front of him.

"Yeah," he said, feeling for his canteen. "This spell's taking a lot out of me, that's all. You do magic, Scorpia?" He chugged his grog, beads of it catching in his finely trimmed beard.

"No, but I'm a fan!" Scorpia said.

"That's cool," Gloom said. "I can handle it. Just needed a quick breather."

"What're you callin' up?" Catra said.

"One of the Formless Spawn of Sadogua," Gloom said, standing up again. "I figure, drop it in the sea, let it... you know... trash the place. It'll take a lot of heat off of us."

"You're gonna dump alive toxic waste on Salineas?" Scorpia said. "That's beautiful. Any way I can help?"

"You're poisonous, right?" Gloom said.

"Venomous! In fact--hey, Lonnie!"

Lonnie hiked over, careful not to disrupt Tomb Gloom's circle. "Yeah?" she said.

Scorpia stung her in the shoulder.

"Dude!" Lonnie said, stumbling away before flopping onto the deck. "That's ffuuuggghlrblb..."

"Paralysis, baby. That's half-power, 'cause like the poet said, when I bust my nuts, I bust 'em one by one."

Catra barfed onto the deck.

"Excellent," Gloom said. "Warm up the stinger and follow my lead."

* * *

Scorpia and Tomb Gloom stared at the MRE while it heated up. Catra was busy belowdecks waiting for something to happen at the Sea Gate.

"So," Scorpia said, "are we friends?"

"Huh?" Gloom said.

"Like, I got stuff I might wanna talk about, but I wanna know if we're friends now first. Like how me and Catra are friends!"

"I haven't heard the word 'friends' this much in a long time," Gloom said. "If I'm gonna be honest I don't know if I've ever heard it this much in one conversation. Or this many times in my life."

"You're friends with Catra and Adora, right?"

"Well, they're my sisters. And I'm not as close to them as they are to each other, anyway." He held his hand out over the MRE package, feeling a little warmth rising up. "I was their half-grown-up babysitter most of the time. I just snuck them candy and helped them with chores now and again."

"That's friends enough for me," Scorpia said. "So are we friends now?"

"Sure," Gloom said, holding out his hand. Scorpia took it very gently and shook, just so.

"Right. So, the thing is, a lot of my family kinda want me to--okay, just to clear the air, I don't wanna do what they want me to do, okay?"

"What do they want you to do?" Gloom said, raising an eyebrow.

"They kinda want me to murder you."

He blinked.

"I'm not, though!" Scorpia said, laughing. "They think it'll let me get control of the Rune Stone back from you."

"I don't know if it works that way," Gloom said. "The literature doesn't support it, at least. There are assumption rituals, rune stone powers aren't hereditary or mutation-based." He scratched his head with the back of one of his vambraces. "I don't even know if I'm connected to it, per se. I mean, princesses aren't born with powers..."

"Eh, it's not a big deal. I have a good time, I'm pretty badass. And it's not like the Black Garnet's going to waste. Shadow Weaver's doin' important stuff with it! So just so you know, you're cool in my book, Gloomy. Can I call you that?"

"Sure."

"Thanks, Gloomy. ... Call me Lil' Stinger."

"Is 'Scorpia' okay?"

"Yes," Scorpia said, "but likewise, I wanna be clear I'd like a cute nickname."

"Yo!" Lonnie shouted over the ship loudspeaker. "We've got the She-Ra on visual and she's tinkering with the Sea Gate!"

"Hot goddamn!" Scorpia said, leaping to her feet. "Dibs on the big gun. You--"

"Two steps ahead of you," Gloom said, cracking his knuckles. He stomped once and made the Sign of Command. " _Spawn of the Slumbering One, ever-foul, protean and fecund, follow my voice, befoul all that in your passage and smother our enemies in your toxic wake!_ "

"The Old Gods had such a way with words," Scorpia said, hitting the activation button for the plasma cannon.

The cannon rose from the deck, breaking the summoning circle with a sharp, electrical snap.

"What was that?" Scorpia said.

"...the... the cannon comes out of the deck?" Gloom said.

"Yeah, so we can aim it forward. Is that bad?"

Thick black tendrils of smoldering oil crept up and onto the deck.

["Yes,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0rr6BZHj8U) Gloom said.

* * *

She-Ra lowered her blade. The Sea Gate shone like the glitter on fresh-fallen snow. "And repairs are complete," She-Ra said, planting her blade on the hovering platform.

"Neat," Mermista said. "That was... completely painless. Thank you."

"Ain't a thing," Adora said, dropping She-Ra and assuming her normal form.

"...not that you have to or anything," Mermista said, "but can you stay She-Ra a little bit longer? She's cool."

"Well, I guess I cou--" Something caught her eye. "Hey, wait. That's a hoverdread over there. It's a Horde hover--wow, it's getting its ass beaten."

She pointed her blade at a hoverdreadnought in the near distance. It was overwhelmed by what looked like a living oil slick. The plasma cannon on deck fired as fast as it could without overheating, and explosions ballooned out sections of the monster as it turned on the ship.

"We should probably do something about it," Adora said.

"You know what?" Glimmer said. "I have an idea."

One exploding burning ship crash later, the Formless Spawn and Horde dreadnought were both dead.

Glimmer and Sea Hawk appeared on the platform. "Ha ha haaa!" they laughed in unison, giving each other massive high fives. "High score!" Glimmer said. "We hit them, they hit the dirt!"

"It's a laugh and a half at all times with this majestic crew!" Sea Hawk said.

"So-o-o," Adora said, turning back to Mermista, "think you might hitch your wagon to the Great Rebellion?"

"You know," Mermista said. "I might. On one condition."

"And that would be?"

" _Let me fuck She-Ra,_ " she said.

Silence.

"Did I say that out loud?" Mermista said.

"Yeah," Adora said, leaning a little away from her. "You did."

"Oh, god dammit." She slapped her own face. "No, I'm... we'll join. We're onboard, no strings, no... creepy... thing. Just... forget I said anything." She turned to jump off the platform.

"Wait!" Sea Hawk said. "I kind of need to borrow a boat. Because mine exploded."

"Uuuuuugh," Mermista said, throwing him the keys to a fancy royal boat. "Just get the hell out of here." She dove into the sea away from the horrors of awkwardness.

"I'm... not sure how to feel about that," Adora said. "Like, is She-Ra all that hot?"

"Yeah," Glimmer said.

"M-hm," Bow said.

"Inexpressibly!" Sea Hawk said.

"Well, son of a bitch," Adora said, "guess my dating pool just got wider."

* * *

Catra returned to consciousness on a rocky outcropping. The rest of her crew, including her brother and the new pain in her ass called Scorpia, were seated elsewhere on the rock. Scorpia had an emergency rescue beacon active and was trying to make conversation.

"--so that really was my bad," she said.

"Let's go halfsies and say it's our bad," Tomb Gloom said. He sat cross-legged, staring out at the sea dejectedly.

"Guys," Catra said, "I hate to admit it, but I think we just kicked our own ass."

"Today sucks," Lonnie said.

Rogelio made a breathy huffing noise which from the context Catra assumed was an agreement.

"Hordak's not gonna like this," Kyle said. "Aaahh, dammit, I don't wanna get exsanguinated!" Rogelio stroked his back the way one traditionaly soothes a nervous pet.

"Look on the bright side," Catra said. "At least Shadow Weaver's gonna get the worst of it for losing an entire dreadnaught for literally nothing." She perked up. "And we can lie about thrashing our own ass!"

"Oh, yeah!" Scorpia said. "We can totally lie, all the onboard cameras melted and then exploded! And it's only half a lie 'cause it really was that burning ship crash that sealed the deal!"

"Good point," Gloom said. "Things are starting to look up."

* * *

Shadow Weaver glowered at Catra through the entire debriefing.

"...so, yeah," Catra said, scratching behind her ear. "Didn't even get close enough to see her. So that was a total disa--"

Shadow Weaver stabbed Catra in the stomach. Shock froze Tomb Gloom where he stood.

Catra fumbled back from her adoptive mother, clutching her wound. She managed to stay on her feet for three steps before falling, curling up in pain. Shadow Weaver hovered over her, the spellblade billowing and dripping smoke in her hand. "One chance, you insipid beast," she said. "And you didn't even lay eyes on her."

"Mother," Tomb Gloom said, trying to tamp down his panic, "I swear, it wasn't her fault. I cast a spell without thinking about the consequences and it cost us the mission, it was my--"

"Tomb Gloom," she said, pointing her blade at his eye, "you've put your head on her neck too many times. Your loyalty to this beast is perpetually unrewarded and yet you keep prostrating yourself before her. To what end? For what purpose?"

"Because she's my sister," he said.

"...were that Adora were as loyal to her pet as you are," Shadow Weaver said. "Then we would not be in this pitiful state." She kicked Catra in the head; only now did Catra make a sound, an involuntary yelp of pain. "Please, excuse yourself, Gloom. This has been a long time coming, and it would do your poor heart no good to see it."

Gloom raised his arm.

"...Gloom..." Weaver said.

Toxic smoke billowed from the emitter. "Mother," he said. "I will not be party to this."

"You cannot be so lost as to threaten your own mother," she said.

"You can't be so blinded by one daughter going missing that you murder the rest of your children."

"I am not blind, Gloom."

"Then prove it. You've more than punished Catra and I'm in a fighting mood."

"Do not test my powers, child..."

"Don't test _mine_." He conjured a dense cloud of poison around his hand.

Weaver tilted her head downward. Her expression was, as ever, unreadable. "You truly are my son." She turned from them, hovering out of her scrying chamber. "Take care of the pest, if you love her so much. I will not be disturbed tonight."

Weaver waved off his poison and ran to Catra's side. "Are you alright--stupid question."

"Could be better," Catra said, pushing herself up onto her knees. "I'm leaking real bad. Like, real bad. Got any healing magic you can lay on me?"

"That's a little out of my, uh, idiom," Gloom said. "Shit, why didn't I ever stock this place with--"

Scorpia knocked, then peered through the door. "How did the meeting go?" she said. "I saw Weaver kinda--oh. Oh, dear." She stepped in, swinging the door open wide. "Not very well, huh."

"You could say that," Catra said, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, kitty," Scorpia said, racing over, "I'm gonna need you to press your lil' leak real tight so it doesn't leak so bad. Gonna pick you right the heck up in three, two, one--"

Catra didn' resist being scooped up in Scorpia's thickly-muscled, chitinous claws.

"Contact made." She cuddled Catra tight to her chest. "Gloom, where's the nearest med station?"

"Follow me," he said, and she followed him apace out the door. He had availed himself of the med stations every day of his life until the surgery and he still dropped by regularly to ensure his cybernetics were functioning; he had a feeling he could find his way to any med station in the Fright Zone even if he were blindfolded.

Within ten minutes they were at a universal treatment station. The wall-mounted fixture unfolded a triage table; Scorpia set Catra on it and automated limbs sprung from the machine, scanning her over. "Easy peasy," Scorpia said. "Let the robots do their job."

"Yeah, I've been to these before," Catra said, lying flat with her arms at her side. A mechanical arm positioned itself over her injury; the business end unfolded into a number of long, sharp instruments.

"Here," Scorpia said, holding out her left claw. "If you need to brace yourself, you can bite down on this."

" _Bastet_ , man," Catra said, "I'm not eight--" She probes jabbed deep into her stab wound, and she reflexively bit down on Scorpia's claw, whimpering as the machine stapled her innards shut. It was over in a few minutes. The med station pumped her full of useful medical chemicals and injected her with instant replacement blood.

Gloom tapped the Bonus Medical Credit button. It read his credit information and, once the arms had retracted, a slot in the side of the machine opened. He pulled out a single orange drop cookie. He sniffed it. "Smells fresh enough. Want it? The sugar helps your blood... normalize, I guess."

"Hell yes, I do," Catra said, spitting out Scorpia's claw. She devoured the cookie.

"Well!" Scorpia said. "That was a fun little medical adventure. How's about I take you to bed--I mean--you know--so you can sleep."

"I ain't sleeping," Catra said, sitting up. "Fuck, I don't know if I'll ever get back to sleep knowing Shadow Bitch is finally ready to kill me."

"Well," Scorpia said, "if you're nervous, you could sleep at my place." She cleared her throat. "In your own bed, I mean. We have beds."

"Where's your dorm?" Catra said. "Hyades? Aldebaran?"

"The Palace of the Ebon Sting," Scorpia said. "We're a little more 'luxe."

Catra blinked. "The... royal palace?"

"Yeah. I'm a princess. It's kinda mine?"

" _You're a fucking princess?!_ " Catra said.

"Please exit the station," the med station said.

"Fuck off," Catra said, flipping it off.

The med station retracted its table. Scorpia and Tomb Gloom both dove to catch Catra, who landed on her feet between them as all three collided with each other with a coconut-like _bonk_.

"...well," Catra said, "I think it's safe to say we have zero dignity left between us. So yes. Let's see this royal... place... thing."

"Can I come too?" Tomb Gloom said. "I think Shadow Weaver might stab me next."

"Yeah!" Scorpia said, lifting both him and her in a massive hug. "Let's make it a party! I'll get some food, get some entertainment, maybe even some painkillers! You like painkillers, don't you, Catra?"

"Yeah," Catra said. "Big fan. Can you please let us go there's an elbow in my surgery hole"

"You sure you don't want me carrying--"

"Very," Catra said.

"Oh... alright." Scorpia let them go.

* * *

"We will lift it

we will bear it

til our bodies

our bodies break."

\--ibid.

 


	4. My Lonely Friend

"Wherever is the wind in the night

I am real."

\--"[If You Have Ghosts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCFwY6ISEMs)," Roky Erikson

* * *

 

At the age of 24, after half a decade of struggle, Gloom finally made it to the ranks of Force Captain.

Force Captain Orientation was held in a closet-sized room. A monitor built into the far (comparatively) wall showed the orientation videos; a whole line of dead pixels unevenly bisected the screen. The most interesting part of the experience had to be the collection of graffiti on the walls, signed by everyone from Multibot Version 4.5.3 to Grizzlor himself. He leaked a little poison onto his finger and etched his own signature below Count Sneer's while the next video loaded.

[A casual guitar cover of the Chelamma Kingdoms' national anthem played](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylET5W32rSM) as the camera panned down from a gruesome stained-glass depiction of Atlach-Nacha down to the smiling face of young Princess Scorpia. She wore a ball gown for the occasion of the video, black with pink ribbons and white trim, and in lieu of a tiara or conventional crown a flower crown of black roses. She hopped with excitement when the camera settled upon her.

"Hello, hello, brand new Force Captains!" she said. "How is it in the future? One day I hope I can be a Force Captain too! Until then, I'm just the lonely lil' princess of the Serkhet people, first to pledge their loyalty to the Almighty Horde. Blessed is Hordak, the Tripartate God." She curtseyed, raising her stinger high over her bowed head.  
Tomb Gloom groaned. Whoever she was she had delusions of what "little" entailed.

"You've been through the basics, now I get to teach you about one of my favorite parts of the Horde experience: the standard operationg procedures for cannibalism!" She gestured grandly to her left and a flattering portrait of Hordak, his child-slash-personal-computer Imp seated on his lap and the two-headed silhouette of Horde Prime looming behind him. "As you know, One True Lord Hordak is an alukah! Alukah are vampiric, meaning they need blood to survive. If you have blood, he's drunk yours to swear you in as Force Captain! And if you're vampiric or otherwise aggressively predatory, that means you're surrounded at all times by people full of delicious, nutritious blood and made of succulent, fresh meat on the hoof. But there's a problem--our Hordak needs to eat! So when do you get to fill yourself up and when do you have to 'pass the dutchie' to your God? Why, you follow the S-O-P of the D-A-Y--and we're givin' it to you as a super handy M-N-E-M-O-N-I-C!"

Mothergods, was she annoyingly energetic. He nodded along to the lesson, though since it wasn't his problem, he didn't exactly commit it to memory.

"Now, say it with me," Scorpia said as the mnemonic spelled out all around her: " **Z** har- **Ll** oigor E **x** ists **A** s **T** win **V** orti **C** es **O** f **E** ntropic Forc **e** , **B.O.Y. H.O.W.D** y!"

"Boy howdy," Tomb Gloom said.

"Got it? Great!" Scorpia said, clapping her claws. "Now, follow me to the dining hall, and I'll show you the SOP for preparing blood in situ to bring to Lord Hordak. It's real easy--the hard part is finding an altar to desanctify! 'Cause gettin' all those tasty bloodbags in place is gonna be easy-peasy for you, Force Captain _Tomb Gloom_!"

He jumped up in his chair. "What was that?"

Scorpia skipped down the halls as the camera followed her into the dining room. She didn't speak back to him, but that had definitely been her voice. By the time she reached the bound satyr on the blasphemed altar of Mother Mormo, the feeling of shock had faded. Surely this hadn't been a live broadcast.

But that said he paid closer attention, just in case.

* * *

The civilian transport hovercraft groaned through the air at a leisurely pace, the hover engines making everything faintly vibrate. It was making his eyes see sparks. Catra was curled up on her seat next to him; Scorpia was on his other side, idly playing with a puzzle cube.

"Hey," Gloom said to her.

"Yessir?" Scorpia said.

"At Force Captain orientation," he said. "Was that a live feed you were in? Or was it prerecorded?"

"Oh, that thing!" Scorpia said. "It was prerecorded, but they have me say the name of whoever's getting inducted when they show the video. Makes it nice and personal!"

"I always wondered," Gloom said.

"Simple trick. I'm always available, so they just call me and I say the name and voila! Instant warm and fuzzy family feeling. Oh hey, the palace!"  
The Palace of the Ebon Sting had once been an elegant castle of black stone and bronze, but the Fright Zone had changed it. It had since grown fangs, open wounds, eyes growing in patches of

black flesh. One eye, nearly ten feet across, grew over the main gates, and fixed its gaze on Tomb Gloom as Scorpia checked in.

"Hi!" she said over the intercom. "It's me, Scorpia! And two guests. One is Catra! She's going to be in the honeymoon suite, and I want it extra honeymooney, you got me? Also, Tomb Gloom is here--yes, that Tomb Gloom--and just to be absolutely clear? If anyone so much as serves him dinner deliberately late, I am gonna find who did and I'm going to kill them _as hard as I can_. Because he is a guest, and that would be rude. Also, don't try to kill him, or I'll kill you _harder than that_."

The mold-caked gates clattered open like a garage door. (Not that Tomb Gloom would know what one of those is, but American English is a harsh mistress.) A pair of serkhet guards in glittering black plate armor marched into sight, their massive stings held just over their shoulders. "Princess," they said in synch, "our lives are laid down for you."

"Rockin'!" Scorpia said, walking past them with Catra held somewhat uncomfortably in her arms. "Keep up the good work, Stan and Jan."

"We're Rapthorne and Hastings!" the left guard said.

"Oh, sorry!" Scorpia said, turning around and walking backwards. "The armor throws me off 'cause of the whole 'faceless guard' thing? You four have pretty similar builds."

Tomb Gloom sped past them. "Hey," he said.

He felt their spiteful gaze on his back as he passed.

* * *

Catra stared at the bed. "What is that?"

"It's a bed, silly. ... Wait, did that stab hurt your head?" Scorpia said, without any trace of mockery or jesting. She took Catra's head in her pedipalps, to Catra's vocalized disdain. "Your pupils are working alright, no scalp bleeding..."

"That bed's the size of a truck," Catra said, "and it has its own ceiling."

"It's a four-poster bed!" Scorpia said.

It was indeed. The honeymoon suite had a bed sized for newlywed centaurs, hidden by sparkly translucent curtains embroidered with patterns of entwined, dancing scorpions. The room was wine-colored and plush and had a hot tub bubbling away in the corner. It was luxury the likes of which Catra and Tomb Gloom had no conception of.

"Can you let go of me?" Catra said.

"Sure thing," Scorpia said, letting her go.

Catra padded to the bed and climbed in. "...huh. This is pretty soft." She reached the pillows, set her head on one, and her eyes fluttered shut. In seconds she was snoring gently.  
Gloom sighed. "Sleep's the easy part of healing," Gloom whispered. "'Least it is for me."

"Yeah, you had some serious work done on you, right?" Scorpia said, gesturing to the door. They left, entering the tall-ceilinged hallway. Looking upon them was a shrine to Atlach-Nacha, a statue of a hooded, many-armed woman playing a great silvery web like a biwa. "Atlach-Nacha has a little stake in surgery, you know--all the cloth wrappings and injections and stuff. You wanna pray to her? For Catra, maybe you, too?"

"I--well, my mom's devoted us to the Feasting Hands. He's supposed to be jealous."

"Well, if you don't wanna," Scorpia said, taking a knee before the statue, "then I will, for you. If--if that's alright."

"It is," Gloom said, leaning against the opposite wall.

Scorpia rest her claws against the ground and lay her tail flat on the ground, curled around her bent knee. She recited a poem.

"I pray to thee who brings the peace I find only in dream  
Whose eighteen legs in pair and four do work the Silver Loom  
The queen beneath Vormithradreth, into your silken room  
We bear each night to taste the real in respite from what seems

What joy is here in this low world when what you make unseams?  
In all your arms I feel your love as in my mother's womb  
Til jealous Dawn my lover scorned my resting self exhume  
To wound my eyes with scintillating stroke of Bright Moon's beam.

O Spider-God, bereaved of Leng, I pray to you this night:  
My cat belov'd--though newly met--deliver her to me  
In all your arms may she be safe until the light returns

For Catra dear has been struck down to surely wake in fright  
May in her dreams her wings unfold and in the sky be free  
For in her smile is found my heart; for her it brightly burns."

By the end of her prayer she had draped herself across the statue, languishing in its stony arms. "Was that alright?" Scorpia said, slipping back out.

Tomb Gloom took a moment to form his thoughts, and settled on saying "You've known her for less than twenty-four hours."

Scorpia's eyes sparkled. "Only a day?" She swooned. "We've already loved each other a lifetime..."

Gloom smiled. "Heh. Don't take this the wrong way, but... you just reminded me of my mom."

"Of Shadow Weaver?" she said. "In, uh, what way, may I ask?"

"Well," Gloom said, "you wouldn't guess it, but she's still head over heels for my dad. It'd be embarrassing if... well... she weren't Shadow Weaver."

"Huh! She doesn't strike me as the helpless romantic type." She leaned in close. "Do you have any stories about your dad you can share? ... Who was he, anyway?"

Tomb Gloom leaned against the wall. "You've heard of him."

Scorpia blinked. "You have a famous dad?"

"Kind of. You remember King Micah?"

Judging by her expression, she did. She bit her lip. "...ow. That's a bummer."

Gloom glanced away from her. "Yeah..."

* * *

Training ended early the day King Micah died. It was after all the most crushing victory of the Horde in years of conflict--when else should one celebrate?

Every screen in the Fright Zone played footage of the king's last stand on the bridge, assembled from dozens of suitcams and one skullcam. Micah wreathed himself in layers of brilliant shields of light, but separated from the rest of his pack the mass of blaster-rifle-wielding Hordesmen wore him down. Pared to his final layer of shields, Micah sacrificed them in a burst of force that sent the Horde soldiers flying back.

He doubled over to catch his breath, at which point Leech took the opportunity to slither up from beneath the bridge. He lunged at the king, wrapping his sucker-lined arms around his legs and latching his massive hook-toothed maw on the king's side.

Micah screamed and Leech gulped down his blood. Gloom still remembered the way Leech's throat darkened as he gorged on his father's blood. Mica conjured burning light in his hand and slapped his palm on Leech's head 'til the fiend could no longer stand it. The beast let go and slithered away, squealing. Micah stumbled back, covering the gaping, gushing wound in his side; and then Callix finished closing the distance and swung his chipped obsidian axe through his head.

It was not a cut at the neck, like an executioner. A chunk of the king's head was stuck to his neck--most of his ear, part of an eye socket. The loose skin of his jaw and shattered jawbone flapped in the wind as he collapsed. Gloom couldn't keep his eyes off that flap of bone and skin.

The video cut out as vines conjured by Plumerian magic crept around the bridge and toward the triumphant Callix as he took a trophy from the king's corpse.

On the long walk home Gloom watched his father die something like thirty times.

The moment he stepped foot in his home, Catra sprinted out to meet him. "Gloom!" she said. "Gloom, move your ass, Shadow Weaver's _lost it_."

"Lost what? Why?" Gloom said, running after Catra as she doubled back.

"Somethin' 'bout that dead king. It's freaking her out, she wants to talk to you."

"Do I have to? About what?"

"Hell if I know! But she fuckin' sliced her forearm open--"

"She did _what_?!"

Shadow Weaver was in her bedroom, seated on her bed and leaning into the corner of the wall. Adora was holding her, resting her head on her shoulder. His mother was sobbing. Her arms were wrapped with black-stained bandages.

"Leave," Shadow Weaver said to Adora.

"Please," Adora said. "I couldn't live with myself if I left you alone like this."

" _Please,_ " Weaver said. "My Gloom is here. He will help. He can save me. I know he will." She looked up at him.

His heart hammered in his chest. He would rather just turn off his cyberorgans rather than comfort his mother alone. He mouthed: "Stay."

"...Shadow Weaver, I..."

A little blade of shadow coalesced in Shadow Weaver's trembling hand.  The point was angled at her own throat.

Hesitantly, Adora climbed off Weaver's bed, tiptoeing through the debris field of discarded stimpacks, blood injectors, and tranquilizers. "Good luck, Gloom," she said, pausing to hug him on the way out of the room. "Please be safe," she whispered.

Good kid. Good kid.

She closed the door behind her, and it was him and Shadow Weaver, goddammit.

"Gloom..." Weaver said. "You've seen it, haven't you? The video?"

"The one about Callix killing King Micah?" he said. He didn't get any closer. "Yeah. I've seen it a bunch."

Weaver looked down at her injured arms.

"Tomb Gloom..." she said. "Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I could never bear to tell you, knowing full well that your father was trapped in the company of traitors and fools..."

The ground was no longer sure under his feet.

The king had resisted being photographed or filmed due to his mastery over light. No good, clear image had been taken of him until after Callix destroyed most of his face. Shadow Weaver had professed that saying her lover's name aloud would have been too much to bear for the weight of his betrayal, his abandonment of her.

He had all the room in the world to deny her, to shove the thought into a musty corner of his brain to forget like a dream on waking.

He knew at once she had to be telling the truth.

"...no way," he said. "No _absolute goddamn way_."

"It is the way," Shadow Weaver said. She ran her thumb along her bandages where they were stained the darkest, as if they were dipped in pitch. "Your father could not follow me to the promised land... and in time that vile devil stole his heart." She breathed. "They knew. They knew I loved him still. I could have saved him and..." She pulled off her mask and flung it aside.

He never got used to what Mystacor had done to his mother's face.

"I could have saved him," Weaver said, stepping out of her bed. Stepping, not hovering, a discarded syringe cracking under her feet. "Those Horde brutes knew I could have saved him and they _killed_ him..."

She threw herself onto him; he was strong enough now to keep from being bowled over, but not strong enough to do anything but stand there in numb shock as she wept ochre tears into his shoulder.

He didn't remember a lot of the specifics, having blotted them out over the years, but he had spent much of the afternoon in her arms as she cried and chanted the same three things, again and again, until Shadow Weaver collapsed into an exhausted sleep. He slid out of her grasp once her breathing had slowed and the snoring began.

He sat down outside her door, like he was barring it, and tried to name the feeling that was burning in his chest. The feeling of having learned his father's name the day he watched his father die, again and again, for the enemy cause.

Adora and Catra, for their part, had done some trading to get him his favorite MRE, and while Shadow Weaver slept, they had a little feast in their bunkroom, chowing down on barely-edible food and swapping desserts.

"What did she want from you?" Adora said.

"My company," he said. "That's all."

"Did she die?" Catra said, hopefully.

"We'll see," he said.

That was all they asked. He would never tell them who his father was, as Shadow Weaver would never tell them. He wondered if either of them suspected the truth.

* * *

When his story ended and he returned to the real world, there was a blanket around his shoulder and a warm cup of coffee in his hands, and he was seated in a comfortable chair in a little reading room, opposite Scorpia, who had a tall and frosty glass with a cloud of whipped cream and several cherries on top.

"That was rough," Scorpia said. "Sorry you had to go through it."

"What happened?" Gloom said. "When did we..."

"We walked here. You kinda glazed over there for a minute," Scorpia said. "You don't have to talk about it anymore if you don't wanna. Just kick back, chill out."

"Yeah," he said. He sipped his coffee. It was jet black with a single sugar to dull, not blunt, the edge. Just how he liked it. "Did I give you my coffee order...?"

"I took a guess. You know, based on your character archetype and the poison thing. You don't strike me as a frappe kinda guy."

"Huh," he said. "You're good at this."

"Oh yes, I am absolutley bitchin' at being a hostess," Scorpia said, kicking her feet up on an ottoman. "So... if you don't wanna talk about your parents, what can you say about Catra? Is she single?"

Tomb Gloom looked at his coffee. "That's a complicated answer."

"Who's the lucky gi... person? Who I hope is a girl?"

"She's a lady, yeah."

Scorpia glimpsed around conspiratorially. "...is it Adora?"

"...yeah."

"Knew it," Scorpia said into her milkshake.  "Nobody could resist my wiles unless they were crushing on Adora. Never met her, I have to admit, but I heard stories, and she sounds great. ... Defection from the Horde aside, I mean.  ... Was it a sisters thing? Like, did being sisters do it for her?"

"She really wasn't raised like a sister to Adora," Gloom said. "Me and Adora, definitely siblings. Me and Catra, yeah. Catra and Adora... not so much."

"Well, at least their babies won't be monsters, as the poet said," Scorpia said, slumping into her seat.  She licked some whipped cream from her chocolate-and-peanut-butter-and-hazelnut shake.

"You think Adora will come back to us?" Gloom said, taking a drink of his coffee in turn.

"I mean--hope springs eternal, right?"

* * *

In her dreams, it was weeks in the past, and in her dreams, she was on Adora before she could touch that goddamn sword. She said: don't touch it, it's evil. And Adora listened, and they called in drones to take the weapon home, and Hordak told them that it was alright, it would be alright, and the sword was heavy in her hand and plunging into Shadow Weaver's chest. And Catra was laughing; she was laughing, and Adora was crying.

Why, Catra said. Why would you cry for an evil bitch like her?

Because she is our mother, Adora said, and Catra knew that Adora would never love her the way that she loved Adora and her eyes opened and she was awake and soaked in sweat and in considerable pain. The drugs had worn off.

She sniffed; over the stink of her sweat she could detect fresh water and the soothing powdered-flower aroma of fresh pain pills. She felt for her pills on the nightstand and chased them with the entire glass of water left there, and lay back and wait for the physical agony to leave.

After a timeless abyss of darkness where all she had was the desire to never think about her dream again, she felt the pain recede like low tide. Her muscles untensed; she felt like a doll made of jelly seeping into the bed. Her stomach lurched, its sourness the only pain in her body. She lifted her arm off the bed with some effort and felt her bicep; between her fingers the muscles felt like putty. This was good stuff. The painkillers she got were usually the weak shit--aspirin, ibuprofin--or the no-fun stuff, the capsaicin nerve-killers that had no comfort, only chemical neutering of an entire branch of sensation. This was the stuff you could get addicted to.

She had fantasized about getting addicted to painkillers. She liked the idea of being strung out on opiates, drooling and dead to the world. She was envious of Minnie the Moocher and Willie the Weeper. Why not get high enough to forget the world and slip away into a beautiful dream? And so what if it wasn't real?

What was real now, anyway? Nothing could be more real than the She-Ra.

Adora had always been the most real thing in her world. The only person there for her all the time, who would ease her loneliness and help her bear her pain. And now she was gone. She hadn't even come close to seeing her today.

She left her. Left her here, with Shadow Weaver.

Would she have left if she knew how badly Weaver would have hurt her?

If she had known... if she had told Adora that day to come back with her or Shadow Weaver would try to kill her... would she still have stayed with the Rebellion?

What could she have done?

What was there to do?

She flexed muscles in her fingers and jabbed her soft flesh with her claws. The pain was distant, and it was soon gone. The pinpricks of red oozed, unseen in the dark but warm against her skin, like thick sweat. She smelled iron.

"Adora..." Catra said to the silent canopy, to the empty air, to Bastet if she cared at all, ["Please love me."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9wVaf47gWE)

* * *

It was a long, quiet night.

* * *

Tomb Gloom awoke the next day pleased to find he had not been murdered, and the serkhet attendees to his room were not apparently interested in testing Princess Scorpia's temper. He took his breakfast (doled out from an enormous carafe of savory yogurt, a bushel of colorful berries, and most of a roasted goat--not a goatman, he was relieved to see) with his sister and Scorpia in Scorpia's own private dining room, which looked like it was decorated for a rich girl's fifth birthday party, if she were also a big fan of spiders and scorpions.

(Not that he would know what that kind of birthday would look like--hey, English is hard, alright?)

Catra was haggard and distant and answered his questions with noncommital grunts. He didn't ask too many, then. She eschewed the goat in favor of the blandly sweet-and-tangy yogurt and berries.

"So," Scorpia said, "you guys gonna go back to your place? Like, soon?"

"No," Catra said. "Fuck that bitch."

"Agreed," Gloom said. "I'd hate to lean on your hospitality, but we can appeal for a move. Or temporary housing. Or we can slum it with the rest of our classes."

"Naw, naw! We have more room than we know what to do with, after the purges, I mean," Scorpia said. "If you wanna take a break from Shadow Weaver, here's the digs to do it in. We can do our stuff safe from her watching eye, we can get to know each other, we can do parties, we can dress up, we can plan for Princess Prom..."

"For what?" Tomb Gloom said.

"Explain," Catra said, looking at Scorpia at last.

She did.

A plan emerged; and no one present noticed that the shadow beneath their breakfast table was far darker than it should be.

* * *

"Every where I look

you're all I see."

\--"Something I Can Never Have," Trent Reznor (above)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Bearpigs for suggestions on Catra's big scene near the end.


	5. Brothers in Arms

"If you're asking,

I can't say no."

\--Dessa, "Matches to Paper Dolls"

* * *

 

Dryl happened; Mystacor definitely happened.

The next morning in Mystacor, after an uneventful (blessedly uneventful) night, Castaspella fed Adora a weed-infused cookie and insisted on taking her measurements for a sweater. Adora was absolutely fine with this arrangement.

Adora sat on a stool in Casta's classroom. It resembled an art class, a dais surrounded by a motley of chairs and mats and pillows, piles of books next to overflowing bookshelves on the back walls, natural light warming everything in the room. Casta took her position a meter away from Adora and cast a spell. Beams of light sprang from Casta's halo and played down Adora's body.

"And... measured," Casta said, tapping her halo. She feigned a yawn. "Ah, that just took it right out of me. Clearly I need some coffee and cookies. No... coffee and muffins. Ah, muffins, the cupcakes of breakfast."

She took a seat on the dais, below Adora. "Are you feeling it yet, dear?"

"Yeah," Adora said, giving her a slow thumbs up. Casta's weed was not the same strain as Perfuma had given her; it had a stronger body-feel, something that made her hands tingle pleasantly and made her heart beat feel more content, somehow.

"Good, good." She crossed her hands in her lap. "Adora, would you be terribly bothered if I asked you some personal questions?"

"Ask and see if I am," Adora said.

"Well... let's start with a story. Angella wrote to me on the, ah, family situation with the Horde. It's so rare she keeps me up to date, and of course it was just a single sheet of paper... have you ever heard that old song about Mystacor?"

"Pardon?" Adora said.

"'[She gets long letters, writes back a postcard. Times are hard.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQnHAb_6sOs)'" Castaspella sighed and reclined on the dais. "They most certainly are."

"I... yeah. Yeah, they are," Adora said, sliding off the chair and sitting next to Casta. "So you know about my brother. Son of your brother."

"That's a nephew, Adora."

"Which one is a nephew?"

"...oh, right. I'm Tomb Gloom's auntie, Tomb Gloom is my nephew." She gathered her thoughts. "Is he a good man?"

"Yeah," Adora said. "He was always kind to me and Catra. Kinder than Shadow Weaver ever was."

"Good," Casta said. "That's good to know."

Adora thought of Light Spinner's statue. It was a pile of rubble, labeled with a curt placard:

The Magic-User Once Known As Light Spinner  
Disgraced

"I... I don't know what to think," Adora said.

"Adora," Castaspella said, "I could never think ill of one of my brother's children. From the moment I heard, I was wondering... but you turned out to be such a lovely young woman. And I thought, surely my brother's child could turn out as well as you, even growing up in a place like that, under a... well, under Shadow Weaver."

"You can swear if you want," Adora said. "It's fine."

"If I swore at Shadow Weaver we'd be here all day, dear," Casta said, closing her eyes. "I was just a child... back then. I felt completely helpless--a student of magic, feeling helpless. So much had gone wrong, and my brother was so hurt, and all I could do was practice my cantrips."

"Sometimes," Adora said, "I think I should've gone back on a run for Catra and Gloom."

"Who is that, again?" Castaspella said.

"...do you really want to know?" Adora said.

"Well, I've gone somewhere uncomfortable. If you feel like it, I'm here."

* * *

Adora's first kiss happened in an abandoned steelworks.

They were there because Shadow Weaver was off on an errand in Hordak's tower, there to perform some ritual for some thing, with Tomb Gloom in tow to help control the energies. This gave them some time alone, and by necessity, for Shadow Weaver had locked her building totally and sent the two "elsewhere." Anywhere but home.

The steelworks were abandoned because one cheery day a vat of molten iron had fallen from its hinges. Four workers died instantly when the crucible burst, as if it were made of glass, and spilled out a tide of molten metal that pulled itself along the ground with grasping members, bellowing hateful prayers as it dragged the burning bodies of dying slaves into its crushing bulk. The monster was slain at some expense and the lingering magicks dispelled, but there were other, more productive factories that had yet to be haunted, and steel was far from the most necessary material in the Fright Zone.  So it was abandoned in case the Fright Zone had more to do.

The factory was lightless, but Catra had caught a rogue drone and with Adora's help disabled every function except flying at a set height and keeping its flash on permanently. Catra led it along on a string; it cast an eerie spotlight across the bare, uneven floor, over great vaults where machinery used to be.

It was less interesting than they'd hoped. The only sound was the low moan of wind from the open door and, real or imagined, the sound of small things moving in the darkness. They came to a shallow vault where some smaller piece of equipment had once lived and sat on the edge, dangling their feet over the sheer drop a story below.

"So," Catra said, "I'm pretty sure I could stick that landing."

"Me too," Adora said. "What, ten feet onto concrete? Easy."

"Wanna try it~?" Catra said, running her tail up Adora's back.

"Nah," Adora said.

"Wuss."

"Yep." Adora held her steel-bitten hands up. "I'm not at full capacity. I'm still leaking from all the robot guts."

"Big deal, I've actually _been_ up to my wrists in guts before," Catra said, flexing her hands and popping out her talons. Adora grabbed her left hand (for she was sitting to Catra's left).  
Later, Catra would have time to justify it to herself: she caught me off-guard, I let her do it, I wasn't in a high-stakes situation so my reflexes weren't as sharp as they should be. But at the time she simply mewled and watched Adora feel along her palm and fingers. She retracted her claws.

"Thanks for that," Adora said, tickling between the first and second joint on Catra's finger. "I heard that if you massage a cat's paw like this..." She pressed into the first joint.

Catra felt a warm twinge, a pleasantly unpleasant shock, and her claw slipped through the seam in her humanoid fingernail. She had popped her own claws countless times through the years and thought nothing of the feeling, besides a certain security in knowing she could kill a man with one good swipe in the right place. Having her claw popped for her... that was something else.

Adora cooed. "So you can," she said, and touched Catra's middle finger.

"Hey..." Catra said. "That feels weird. Don't do that."

"Alright," Adora said, and took her hand away, and slipped it behind Catra and felt for that place just above her tail.

Catra's butt moved of its own accord, scooting back, and with a little firm massage Adora had her on all fours, ass in the air like the start of an arousal therapy reward video. Catra purred miserably, ashamed of being so happy, pawing the cold ground reflexively.

Adora's heart was damn near beating out of her chest. She'd read the thing about cat paws years ago, and had wondered ever since if it was possible with magickats. She'd read about the secret butt button, too, and its connection with the hidden cat-stinger; that she wasn't hoping for, but even if she wound up with veins full of cat-toxin, she was already living her wildest dreams of teasing Catra. Catra's tail whipped in the air, gently bapping her in the face, soft and ticklish (and without a concealed sting).

"You havin' a good time?" Adora whispered right into Catra's ear.

"She Who Scratches," Catra said, "don't let this leave the room... but yes. Don't stop..."

The drone shone its light on the absent machinery and hummed softly.

When Adora's arm started to grow numb with effort, she guided Catra onto her side, and lay facing her. Her eyes were half-lidded; she blinked languidly, mouth faintly open. Her tail swished against the ground in a slow, wide arc.

Adora looked into those eyes and her entire spiel--something about making fun of Catra for being so easy to reduce to a happy puddle--vanished from her head. All she could do was stare in awe. She was used to Catra being, at best, sardonic and seconds from flying into a whirlwind of talons. Seeing her unguarded was rare. Seeing her unguarded and happy, rarer yet. All that, and content too, blinking gently, smiling up at her--

And in turn, Catra looked up at Adora and felt happiness. Only happiness, unreserved, without fear or hesitation. Free from surveillance, from expectation. A paradoxical cool warmth filled her, comforting and nurturing as warmth, relaxing and awakening as cold. She was... content. Physically content. And in the presence of Adora, who was just staring at her, mouth open, like the pretty dork she had fallen in love with so long ago--

That last thought broke free from the prison of her subconscious, lurching free and striking her consciousness with burning fury.

Adora saw Catra's pupils flare wide, and Catra struck, pulling Adora's mouth onto her own.

They froze, mutually shocked.

After a long time locked in place, they just barely let each other go. Adora's lips felt... scarred. A good kind of scarred, if that were such a thing. Catra felt satisfied. She was grinning, baring fangs.

[It was Adora who spoke at last.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjwbaOZSPjQ)

["...aren't we..." she said.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjwbaOZSPjQ)

"Aren't we what?" Catra said.

"We're... we... we've been..."

"...holding back," Catra said.

Adora flinched.

"What? Am I lying?" She put her hand on Adora's face, even as it was stained by a growing blush. "We needed this. Or why would we even come here? To some haunted place that isn't even haunted? And doesn't even look cool?"

"Catra," she said. "Aren't... I mean... aren't we sisters?"

The question hung in the air like a guillotine.

"Do... is that what you think we are?" Catra said, hushed, a fear she had never named now budding hideously.

Adora looked away. "I don't know," she said.

_Adora, we have been assigned a magickat. Her name is Catra. I anticipate that she may be a useful pet if she does not inherit her late mother's defiant nature._

_If I find you sleeping with Catra anywhere but at your feet I will mutilate her in efficient fashion, such that she will have no joy in forcing herself upon you._

_Catra, if I catch you staring at Adora again I will take your fool eyes._

_You are no daughter of mine and every day I lament that you did not die in your mother's womb like the rest of your filthy siblings._

"No," Catra said. "We're not." Her other hand, now, on Adora's other cheek. Adora's eyes were shining with tears.

"What are we?" Adora said.

"There's no word for what we are," Catra said. "And let's be honest, if there is, neither of us are smart enough to know it."

Adora closed her eyes and tears streamed down her cheeks. They beaded at her chin, and one fell, splashing against Catra's mouth.

"Let's..." Adora said, and the universe hung suspended as she waited on her next word. "Let's leave. For now. This place is too goddamn creepy."

They left, drone in tow, and neither of them would speak about that day again, though they thought about it every night.

* * *

"Hello?" Scorpia said, snapping her claws in front of Catra's face.

"Wha...?" Catra said, blinking.

"We're planning, man!" Scorpia said. "What's on your mind?"

They were... she was... right. They were in Scorpia's palace, some inner chamber with a lot of old computers heavy with old intel about the royal palace where Princess Prom was going down ("In every sense of the phrase!" Scorpia had said, gesturing so wide she smacked both Gloom and Catra in the face). Gloom was out making calls to his frie... his fellow Force Captains, seeing if any of them were willing to help the Great Prom Insurrection.

"Just... remembering why we're doing this," Catra said.

"Ah, right! Sharpenin' your dedication. I like it." She gave Catra a hug that she didn't fight back against. "Also, I know you're not, like, related? But you and Gloom both love to do that whole 'stare into space and reminisce on your storied history' thing. Does Adora do that too?"

* * *

"...I think about it every night. And I have a feeling Catra does too." Adora sighed. "And that was that."

"Holy shit," Castaspella said.

"Yeah," Adora said.

"I'm not sending you home without a cask of wine. You need it."

"Thanks, Aunt Casta." 

"Please... keep calling me that. I insist."

* * *

A little time passed.

* * *

Scorpia marched onto an elevated platform she built from a bunch of discarded crates. A projector sent the image of the Kingdom of Snows' royal palace blueprints on a bedsheet stretched between two tetherball poles. She cracked her neck for no reason other than to show how tough she was. "Gentlemen!" she said to the amassed crowd of four people. "Ladies! Today, we plan for Princess Prom."

Mosquitor chuckled. Mosquitor chuckling sounded like someone running a zipper up and down in a swift rhythm. "Seriously? 'Prom?' That's so lame."

" _You're_ lame," Scorpia said. "...oh, Atlach-Nacha, I'm so sorry, Mosquitor, that was rude of me and you're such a nice per--"

Dragstor backfired one of his cylinders. "No, he isn't."

"Famously, I ain't!" Mosquitor said.

"So that's one lie down. You gonna keep lyin' to us, bug?"

"Hey, watch the b-word!" Scorpia said.

Catra glared at Tomb Gloom. "These guys are your friends?"

"Co-workers," Gloom said, scratching the back of his head. "We're all enhanciles, so we all know Modulok, so we all know each other. And, well... Dragstor can't poison me and I can't poison him, and Mosquitor can't drink from him--"

"He's tried," Dragstor said.

"One day," Mosquitor said, clenching a chitinous, four-clawed fist.

"--you get the picture," Gloom said.

"They put you together because you can't kick each others' asses?" Catra said.

"I mean," Dragstor said, "I could kick both your asses."

"Try me, motorboy," Mosquitor said.

"Hey, can we get back on track?" Scorpia said. "My crew's been having a real rough time, we called in help so we can do this plan better than our last plan, and even Shadow Weaver hasn't been doin' good against She-Ra... so, guys, we super duper need this win, and also I've always wanted to go to Princess Prom, and this is like my only chance, and..." She sniffled--a little at first, then exaggeratedly, calling up a few tears. "It's all so big and scary! Can we even do it if we can't get along? Can you do this if you can't even--"

" _Fuck you_ I can't do it," Mosquitor said, pointing accusingly.

"What do you think we are?" Dragstor said. "A couple of chumps?"

"Kinda," Tomb Gloom mouthed behind their backs.

"Not at all," Scorpia said. "But now's the time to show Hordak you mean business. _Do_ you mean business?"

"Hell yeah!" Mosquitor said, brandishing his spiral beam rifle and blasting a long wriggling scorch onto the ceiling.

"Yes," Dragstor said.

"Huh," Catra muttered to her brother. "That was actually kind of clever."

Gloom nodded.

"Alright--" Scorpia said, wiping her tears away ineffectively. "Here's the plan. Step one: who here wants to rule the dance floor like a golden god?"

* * *

Glimmer was walking down the halls for no particular reason when Adora snatched her out of the hallway and into her room.

"Yeek!" Glimmer said. "What in the heck?"

"Glimmer," Adora said, somewhat raspily. Her eyes were red and her voice was low and conspiratorial. "He-e-y, Glimmer."

"...Yes?" Glimmer said. Her eyes darted from Adora to the sheet Adora had tacked up, covered in maps and notes.

"Glim-mer... you're... you're inviting me? To the prom?"

"No, Perfuma did," Glimmer said. "While we were eating dinner that night! So Bow's my number two, technically. Did you forget?"

"...mighta..." Adora said, giggling. "She-e-e-eit, I think I need... I think... Princess Prom is kinna blowing my mind, yeah? I start to, what's it, start to think about it, and then," she mimed an explosion and made an explosion noise. "Head. Gone. Totes. So I been... you know... I been planning... and smoking weed... to make it... less scary... and... I think..." She trailed off and stared at her feet.

"Yes, Adora?" Glimmer said.

"I texted Sweet Bee," Adora said. "I thought she could bring me honey."

"Oh, no..."

She held up her text-message-delivery-machine. The top message was from StingingCutie23 and read "SUP ASSDICKS".

"Adora, I know it's how you manage your anxiety, but... maybe you need to cut back on the marijuana." She pointed at a map. "That's not even a map of the Kingdom of Snows. I think that's one of Bow's tactical engagement simulator maps."

"It isn't?" Adora said, squinting at it. "Oh... yeah. Thassa... desert. Totally different." She rubbed her eyes. "I'm hungry..."

"Me too," Glimmer said, taking Adora's hand. "How about we eat?"

"Ye-e-e-e-s,"Adora said, and Glimmer blinked them both to the kitchen.

* * *

Tomb Gloom stepped into the planning room as Catra and Scorpia were laughing at something. They were standing near a dressing mirror next to the snack table; Catra was cutting a profoundly dashing figure in a stylish tuxedo; Scorpia was dressed in a frilly, light-purple gothloli number.

"Hey, guys," he said. "Man, Catra, that's..."

"Fantastic, I know," Catra said, flipping her hair majestically. "But, seriously, can you see Scorpia wearing that to Princess Prom?"

"I... yeah, I know it's goofy-looking," Scorpia said, blushing, "but I like to... you know..."

Gloom remembered her frilly number from Force Captain Orientation. "Maybe you should go with it. If people laugh at you, they're gonna be less suspicious about, y'know, ulterior motives."  
"But then I'll look dumb when they look back and think, 'Oh, that's what she was wearing the day of the big operation.' Or they'll think it looks totally bitchin' and they'll reevaluate everything they thought about fashion..." She scratched her chin. "Hrrrm. This is gonna take a minute to ponder."

"We have like a week," Catra said. "You have time."

An arm crawled from under the snack table, a bug-eyed head attached where it should have fit into an arm socket. "If I may weigh in," Modulok said, and everybody present screamed in shock. Catra would deny it, of course. "Ah, sorry. I was waiting for the right time."

" _Bastet,_ man," Catra said, "did you learn manners from a jump scare class?"

"It's one of my great strengths," Modulok said, climbing up the snack table's leg slowly but with practiced grace. Scorpia picked him up and set him on. "Ah, thank you, princess."

"No problem," Scorpia said, saluting

"Tomb Gloom, if I may," Modulok said.

Gloom knelt before him. "What is it?" he said.

"It is a little short notice, surgically speaking," he said, and watched Gloom's expression fall. "But this is good news, not an emergency. Have you ever considered becoming a full enhancile?"

"Well," Gloom said, "now that I've been out from under my mom's heel for a while... I've been thinking about it."

"Good," Modulok said, smiling as best he could with a lipless, fang-lined mouth. "Listen. I have some very useful muscular enhancement nodules I think would work well with your existing implants. They would give you a physical edge you have previously lacked. I understand you have designs on the All-Princess Ball."

"You understand correctly. Also, who told you? It's supposed to be secret."

"Mosquitor," Modulok said.

"Of course," Gloom said.

"Of course. Well," he tilted thus way, quizzically, "how about it, friend?"

"...fuck it. Sure." He bowed. "I want to be the best I can, and Feasting Hands knows we need the help."

"We most certainly do," Modulok said. "Then follow me." He turned around and scuttled to the edge of the table. "Or, rather, pick me up and take me. No, this would not be an efficient way of getting to the lab..."

"See you," Gloom said, picking up Modulok's arm-head and heading to the door.

"Break a leg!" Scorpia said.

* * *

Back in his laboratory, Modulok's other head, mounted on a two-armed, two-legged body for politeness' sake, took a sip of a foul herbal tea. "Your son is quite amenable to being an enhancile," he said.

Shadow Weaver hissed. "Of course."

"You're losing children at an astonishing rate," Modulok said. "If I were in your position, I doubt I could maintain your composure."

"Everything will change soon," Shadow Weaver said. "It will all come together, and all will be well at last."

"That's the spirit," Modulok said, taking another sip. "Shadow Weaver, have you heard of the Ghooric Hypothesis?"

"Of course," she said. "Why do you bring it up?"

"If the Ghooric Hypothesis is correct, optimism is a finite resource which actively interferes with access to the stronger, perpetual energies of pessimism. Being hopeful for the future may interfere with your ability to bring about your better future."

"It is not hope I am nurturing," Shadow Weaver lied, "it is certainty. The plan is in motion and it will continued apace. Through my will and through the might of the Feasting Hands, this world will be forced into its rightful path."

"Let's hope so," Modulok said. This head lacked the musculature necessary to smile, but he tried, anyhow.

* * *

The day drew nigh.

* * *

["You ready?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK8Jys3K6rI) Catra said, smoothing her collar.

"As I'll ever be," Scorpia said, blushing. She had, after a great deal of thought and experimentation, settled on a slinky black dress that caught the eye and trained it on one of her columnar legs.

"That's a yes here," Gloom said, pulling his hood on. Even with Catra and Gloom's severance from Shadow Weaver's care, he wore her colors just as he wore his old spine. His new implants were sore but functional. He felt like he could stare the She-Ra down and stand toe-to-toe with her.

Not that he needed to.  While he knit back together from the surgery, he enchanted a little something.  If She-Ra showed up, she wouldn't be around for long.

"How 'bout you guys?" Catra said, addressing the pack of Hordesmen waiting on them.

"We're good!" Lonnie said. "We're just gonna be waiting for most of this, right?"

"'Cause we're just that good," Mosquitor said, fluttering from the ceiling. "I've been fasting for three days, sippin' just enough to keep from passing out. This is gonna be a feast for the ages, bitches."

"Try not to kill too many princesses," Dragstor said, revving one of their wheels. "They're worth a lot more alive than dead."

"In fact, try not to kill anyone if you can help it," Tomb Gloom said. "If we can throw our weight around without resorting to murder, we can display just how--"

"Yeah, I know," Mosquitor said, slugging Gloom in the arm and immediately regretting it. "Rhan- _Tegoth_ , you have armor on?!"

"I have armor _in_ ," Gloom said, rolling down his sleeve. His skin was drawn taut over his new subdermal implants. Lights blinked under his skin as he flexed. Catra poked him in the bicep. "Ow," he said, sarcastically.

"Neat," Dragstor said. "Now how about we go get this show on the road?"

"Awww man, Princess Prom!" Scorpia said. "The biggest night of all our lives!"

Mosquitor drew his rifle and laid it casually against his shoulder.  "Flex on them hoes, y'all."

Dragstor fired his cylinders, noxious smog bursting from exhaust pipes.  "S-O-P is to demonstrate the flyness of our whips."

Catra popped her claws.  "Let them know our names and tremble in fear."

Scorpia cleared her throat.  "I just hope we all have a great time."

Tomb Gloom flexed his toxicompositors.  "Let's make history."

* * *

"And I know it's madness to play these odds...

It's like giving matches to paper,

to paper dolls."

\--ibid.

 


	6. The Impresario, Part 1

"Love as if today were your last."

\--Jake Kaufman, "The Impresario"

* * *

_Intro_

The crowd around the Princess Prom was thick--not even with people in line, it had been going for nearly an hour, but with people taking a break or deliberately hanging on the outskirts of the ice palace to mingle in quiet or [throw counter-parties of their own](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI7YYtuKtDw) to flaunt their lack of interest.

"We ready?" Glimmer said.

"As ever~" Perfuma said, leaning against Adora protectively.

Adora laughed gently and cradled the Sword of Power in her arms. "Uh... maybe fifty-fifty ready. I'm not super sure about going there without some weed in me..."

"Adora, you don't need herbal enhancement to enjoy this party!" Perfuma said. "It is imperative to enjoy sobriety now and again to best enjoy all the drugs the brain produces on its own. Like love and contentment!"

"I'm not in love and I'm not content," Adora said, only lying once. "And--you said they're not gonna let me keep this." She raised the Sword of Protection. "Can't I at least transform before I go in?"

"Oh, man," Glimmer said, "transform for Princess Prom and _everybody on the planet_ is gonna wanna try and bang you."

Adora laughed nervously. "Really?"

"Yes," Bow and Perfuma and Glimmer said.

"She-Ra is _super hot_ ," Bow said. "I'm not even into ladies--Perfuma excluded, for, uh, reasons--but, damn, She-Ra is _hot_."

Adora sighed. "At least I have the knife."

" _Hairpin_ ," Glimmer said, winking.

"Hairpin," Adora said. She stepped forward at last, and to her intense displeasure Sweet Bee appeared.

"'EYOOOOOO!" Sweet Bee said, raising a bottle of gin. For the occasion her blonde locks were meticulously feathered; she wore a canary-yellow suit that tragically highlighted her bird-like features at the expense of her insectile antennae, abdomen (worn like a tail) and wings. Her wings thrummed at random, sounding like a computer with bad lag. "Heeeeeey Adora, how's it--how's the party?"

"You're not in it?" Adora said. "Are you--uh, are you hanging with the cool kids outside?"

"Na-a-ah," Bee said, taking a quick drink. "I stormed in there like a boss and completely dominated the drink table and then those stuck-up bitches were like," and she affected a fairly offensive and not even remotely correct accent, "'Hey, lady, you can't be _drinkin_ ' no _alky-hol_ like that!' I cordially invited them to suck it and now here we are, showin' those stuck-up pricks how a princess party really looks!" She gestured at Peekablue, who was seated on a rocky outcropping.

Peekablue was tan-skinned, her curly hair a supple green. Her eyes were hidden by an opaque blue veil, a golden, red-pupiled eye embroidered over her forehead. Her peacock tail rest against the rocks, folded but even now faintly glittering. She was waving.

"Oh. Okay," Adora said, trying to step around Sweet Bee.

"So come on," Sweet Bee said, putting her arm on Adora's shoulder unprompted, "let's party like you said we were gonna and we'll--"

Glimmer tagged Adora's elbow and with a bright sound they were teleported behind Sweet Bee. "Maybe at the afterparty!" Glimmer said, her and Adora gunning it for the will call.

"You better be there, Fatty McGoo!" Sweet Bee said, flipping them off.

"Pardon!" Bow said, running past her, Perfuma just behind him.

"Hi, Peekablue!" Perfuma said, waving at Sweet Bee's date, who was still waving.

"'Oh, hi, Peekablue!'" Sweet Bee said mockingly, half-flying, all-stumbling back to her date. "So, babe, what's... how're you doin'?"

She looked Sweet Bee in the eye with her embroidered veil-eye. Her majestic tailfeathers unfolded, and she spoke: "I am witness to death. I am choking. I am tread upon like dust."

"Shit," Sweet Bee said. She held out her bottle of gin. "Drink up, you're way too gloomy today."

"Yes," Peekablue said, taking the bottle. "This place is too wrought with Gloom." She downed the rest of the bottle--a little more than half--in one long, desperate chug.

* * *

_Exposition_

The Winter's Bane had an endless well of patience, the better to explode into thunderous wrath when her opposition appeared at last to be defeated, but even her endless patience was starting to stretch thin from _all these freakin' introductions_. Surely there could only be so many more princesses. Surely someone could at least do something cool enough to make up for Sweet Bee throwing up in the punch bowl in the first thirty seconds of Princess Prom starting.

Princess Glimmer and her sidekick Bow stepped up to her, both of them bowing. Glimmer was a no-kidding nephilim, which was very cool, and she even had wings, even if they were tiny and nearly flush against her back like pressed flowers in a book. "Your Majesty," Glimmer said, "the Adversary, Angella Lucifer Morningstar, extends her hand in friendship. We express our endless gratitude for your invitation."

The Winter's Bane nodded and gave her usual spiel, thinking about how cool it would be if the Winter's Bane acquired a nephilim sidekick with which to conquer the hordes--ahem, the forces of evil whom she would not name specifically.

The next pair stepped up. There was Perfuma, the one who always smelled like roses, and Adora, the famed talent who could turn into the She-Ra.

"That's Frosta?" Adora whispered once she rose from her bow. "But she's, like, ten!"

Proving once and for all that the finest food for Ithaqua was irony, [the music of Princess Prom](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFOZwHqKuXI&t=2m25s) dipped low enough for Adora's sotto voce inquiry to hit the ears of anyone with above-average hearing. Thanks to a combination of biological proclivity and prolific cybernetic and magickal augmentation, that was most of the party.

Including--nay, especially--the Winter's Bane herself, who stared the belligerent polymorph in her icemelt-colored eyes and said, with the power and fury befitting such a weapon of winter, "I'm eleven and three quarters." For she was, and none shall deny her that essential truth of the advancement of time.

Perfuma skipped ahead, flourishing with her skirt. "Most refined Frosta of the Kingdom of Snows! We are humbled by your presence and extend our hands in greeting for your infinitely magnanimous personage."

"I acknowledge your supplication," the Winter's Bane said, her mighty armor cracking ominously as she shifted in her seat, "and allow you to partake of the ancient rules of hospitality. Leave your conflicts at the door, and please enjoy the ball."

Adora and Perfuma left the presence of the Winter's Bane, and the Winter's Bane reflected grimly on the many long years left before she could partake of alcohol to better handle the perilous weight of the crown of ... icy... bearing?

Crown of Icy Bearing.

Yeah, that had a ring to it.

She'd have to draw that later.

* * *

_Scene 1_

Adora whimpered. "Oh, man, I can't believe I screwed that up..."

"Oh, it's hardly a screw-up!" Perfuma said, giving her an unasked-for hug. Well, it was a nice, firm hug, at least. "You were just saying the truth just as it popped into your head, which is not bad at all!" She glanced around. "...may I kiss your cheek?"

"...sure?" Adora said.

Perfuma did so, a firm and swift peck on the cheek. The floral princess blushed magnificently. "Goodness," she said, fanning herself.

Adora chuckled. "It wasn't that intense."

"We could make it that intense! I mean--I mean--"

Mermista stepped in out of nowhere. "I know what you mean," she said. "Hi, I'm here now. I'm going to be completely honest, I'm hoping enough time has passed that I can have another go at, if nothing else, dating you."

"Oh, me too!" Pefuma said.

Mermista cracked her knuckles. "Good thing we've left our conflicts out the door, then."

"But!" Perfuma said, standing between Mermista and Adora, "Adora may be the type of woman to fall in love twice a day, as we say in Plumeria! Surely it would not be out of the question to--"

Adora cleared her throat.

"Yes?" Mermista and Perfuma said.

"I think I have a, uh, I need to be impressing Frosta, so... I think I'm gonna... you know... make a good impression. But, uh, when a dance happens, you can count me in as a partner! How's that sound?"

"Me as a partner," Mermista said, "or is that for both of--"

"Yeah, both," Adora said, sidling away. "I'll see you guys later." She vanished into the crowd.

Mermista sighed. "So, Perfuma. Let's diffuse this tension before it gets worse. Wanna find that liquor table and get shitfaced?"

"Yes, thank you!" Perfuma said. "I must warn you my tolerance is remarkable!"

"Good," Mermista said. "Because if it wasn't I'd be disappointed."

Sea Hawk cut in. "What's this I've heard about--"

Mermista pushed him away, none too gently. "No."

"Alright... no use being where I'm not wanted. Oh, hello, Bow!" Without missing a beat he switched conversations to Bow and Glimmer, who had cups of punch and easy smiles. "How's the prom?"  
"Well, we just got here, but this pink stuff's pretty good!" Bow said, swishing his cup around.

"Ha ha! Magnificent!" Sea Hawk clapped. "I'm afraid that Mermista is performing a necessary act of--well, they're off drinking. Would you care to drink with me?"

"Would I!" Bow said, perking up.

"What kind of drink are you talking about? 'Cause I've only got the three drink tickets and there's a forty-five minute cooldown between--"

"I brought my own," Sea Hawk said, presenting two tall bottles of rum.

"Hello, new best friend," Glimmer said.

"Huzzah!" Sea Hawk said, hoisting his rum bottles high. "To _adventure_ \--to find a place where we may drink in peace!"

"Amen, friend!" Bow said.

"Let's start this party off _right_ ," Glimmer said, finishing her punch in one quick gulp.

* * *

Mosquitor's eyes rolled back as he slurped up the last of the guard's blood; it was the very best part of the act of exsanguination, where the blood was mixed with tatters of vein and shreds of heart--the pulp, one might say. The [calm, passionate music of Princess Prom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gHwYb90D6A) echoed in the hall, the last sound the guard would ever hear.

He lowered his head and the guard's limp, stiff body touched the ground without noise. He pressed one three-clawed foot on the guard's back and pried his vibroblade-enhanced proboscis free, shuddering. The translucent organ on his chest pumped with fresh, wine-red blood.

Tomb Gloom stared at the corpse. "No going back," he said, and he didn't know why he said it.

"Never is any goin' back," Dragstor said, rooting through the guard's stuff. "Hrm, full wallet. I got a guy back at Lambspoke Branch..." He stuffed coins and photographs into one of his storage compartments. "Collects foreign money. He'll give me five times the face value in Hordemarks."

Gloom, on account of having the newest augmented muscles, had the task of throwing the guard over a balcony into the abyss outside the palace. Gloom remembered the agony of dragging sandbags full of Gaussian movement generators to simulate struggling prisoners. Now the weight of a dead man slung over his shoulder was like carrying a large paperback book. A little more ungainly, perhaps, but his back didn't even stoop and his legs did not strain to bear the weight.

"Adios, motherfucker," Mosquitor said, mock-saluting the guard as he fell out of sight. He spoke into the communicator built into his wrist. "Yo, we got the three guards in our part of the palace. How's it on your end?"

Lonnie chimed in. "Three down. Non-lethal, but we're packing them in the transport. Some of us need that P-O-W bonus pay, Skeets."

"And some of us really need to eat. Don't spend all those marks in one place." Mosquitor flicked his wrist, ending communications. "Alright, now we have a few minutes while Catra and Scorpia ingratiate themselves. ... Anybody bring cards?"

"I dunno," Gloom said, leaning against the balcony railing. "I'm not feeling cards. This far into enemy territory we're well away from the light of the Fright Zone. It's... kind of a nervous feeling, I guess."

"Kid's got new muscle groups and he's feeling nervous," Dragstor said, spooling out his whip-axe and taking a few practice swings. "Sometimes I can really see the hunched-over wimp you used to be, Gloom."

Gloom huffed. "My sister's in the mix. Both of them are. And the last time I had to fight Adora I got my ass kicked, bad. And Scorpia's here. Treader in Dust, this could go wrong in a million different ways."

"She ain't got her sword, yeah?" Mosquitor said, balancing on the railing. His slight build didn't give him much to balance, and his wings certainly helped, but it wasn't any better for Gloom's nerves to see him alight with the cold floor to his back and a yawning abyss before him. "So the real question is, can you punch your sister in the face now that you're stronger than her?"

"Hey, now," Dragstor said. "Why punch her lights out when he can just poison her a little? Didn't see a gas mask on her."

"Can we not talk about how I might have to work over my sister?" Gloom said.

"Not as bad as _Catra_ worked her over," Mosquitor said, pelvic-thrusting the bitter icy night.

Gloom blushed and shrank into himself. "Goddamn you..."

* * *

Through Gloom's eyes, Weaver and Modulok watched his friends--well, his fellow Hordesmen--carry on.

Shadow Weaver fumed.

" _Damnation_ , child," she said.

Modulok poured a fresh cup of tea. "It is no use to be angry," he said. "All you do is cloud your own judgment. You can't precisely kill them from here."

"It would be profoundly easy," Shadow Weaver said; and it would be. Modulok's design was very simple.

"But then you would be two men down on a vital secret mission for the Horde."

"Their mission, not mine. I could prove them foolish. Force them back under my care. Euthanize Catra. Castrate Scorpia... geld Mosquitor, if that brazen bitch escapes my wrath."  
Modulok tutted. "Your professed intolerance of aberrance from gender commonalities is perhaps your least-fitting aspect, Shadow Weaver. For were you not cast out yourself for being on the margins of your home society? For worshiping the Dweller in the Labyrinth, for taking an unfashionably young lover."

"There is a difference between grasping what no one else has the will to grasp and actively defying the natural order out of some misguided pride."

There were a thousand ways to say what he wanted to say, and zero of them would ingratiate himself to her. So he bid one of his arms pour a cup for his groin, which was poised precariously on one of Multibot's legs and clearly dehydrated.

...how had his groin become attached to a Multibot limb? He hadn't seen Multibot for days. Perhaps his groin had gone wandering, as it was prone to do. There were times he wished he had a more complete brain there.

Ah; such things were, as the parlance of the time, pancake matters.

* * *

_Scene 2_

Perfuma and Mermista were draped across a chillout couch. Perfuma sipped a mojito, Mermista knocked back slug after slug from a flask.

Perfuma hiccuped, then giggled. "Ooh, that had too many bubbles," she said. "I feel so--hic!--so silly~"

Mermista groaned like a sick bison. "The alcohol was stronger than indicated. I am not usually this much of a lightweight."

"I trust," Perfuma said. "It is also--hic!--the atmosphere, and the excitement, and the [suspiciously appropriate music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uZRP6PTN_4)\--"

"I dunno about 'suspiciously appropriate.'"

"--and the myriad complicated emotions you have about Adora and She-Ra and how you were completely incapable of--hic!--expressing it even with alcohol in you!"

"Yeah... I'll cop to that last part." Mermista stared at the family motto engraved on her flask ( _Ua make ke Akua_ ). "I think it's the Everclear talking, but I think you need to know I said 'yes' to drinking with you because you're tall and blonde and strong and if I pretend that I've got beer goggles on then you're kinda She-Ra looking and that's really hot."

"You were imagining me as--hic!--as She-Ra?"

"Yeah."

"...well, if it makes you feel better," Perfuma said, "I was imagining you as She-Ra too."

Mermista winced. "...ah, dammit. I just--imagined myself, as She-Ra? And now I am, like, _crazy horny_."

"Me too~" Perfuma said.

"Okay. How about we find a nice hidden place?"

"Okay. Is it alright if I imagine you as She-Ra?"

"I'm going to imagine both of us are She-Ra," Mermista said. "Full disclosure."

"Fine by me," Perfuma said, giddy, before Adora skidded to a stop in front of them.

"Guys!" she yelled. Perfuma dropped her glass and high-proof grain alcohol went up Mermista's nose, resulting in a horrendously painful sneezing and coughing fit. Adora cursed and waited out the panic. Once Mermista was breathing properly she said, "Catra's here. She's with a serkhet princess, I think her name was... Scully?"

"Oh, whoopee," Mermista said, "the cat person who kicked her own ass the last time she showed her head."

"The Horde are not to be taken lightly," Perfuma said, crossing her hands in her lap. "No matter how powerful we feel at the moment, they--"

"They what?" Catra said, stepping from behind Adora and putting a hand on her shoulder. Adora froze in place.

Mermista scoffed. "They, being your tailors, ran out of money before they got to your shoes, and they still sent you here to piss on all our houseplants."

Catra's smirk didn't waver. "Classy, princess. Good to see the Rebellion is so tolerant and approving of all peoples."

"We're perfectly tolerant of people who aren't in the middle of committing planetary genocide," Mermista said before either Adora or Perfuma could stop her. "Put down the deterraformers and we'll be very--"

A guard walking by struck the floor with the blunt end of his spear. "Leave your conflicts outside," he said.

"You heard the man," Catra said, and slipped away, running her tail along Adora's butt on the way out.

"Goddammit," Adora said between grit teeth. "Everybody's off doing everything except help--" She stormed off. The last either of the ladies on the couch heard from her was "shouldn't be sober..."

Mermista slapped her own face. "Son of a bitch, I ruined it again."

Perfuma hugged her, something that Mermista tolerated. "It's not too late to make up for it. We should help."

"Fine. Alright. Let's try and get this foot out of my mouth."

* * *

Bow and Glimmer and Sea Hawk stumbled through the frigid halls arm in arm, exhausted and just a little tipsy and singing an old sea shanty about the furry old lobster.

"Sing ho-hi-de-hay, have they all gone away? For we haven't seen many around!" they sang, dragging out the last note as long as they could before collapsing into a collective giggle fit.

"Aha ha, what fun we've had!" Sea Hawk said.

"I noticed!" Glimmer said. "Because I was there for it, like, minutes ago."

"Ut, ut!" Sea Hawk said. "It's always worth a little exposition in case someone wanders by and asks themselves, 'for what reason are these fine young people so happy?' And we can say in full confidence that it is due to--oh hey, who's that?"

A tall, broad-shouldered serkhet was a few yards away, near one of the support pillars. She was affixing something to it, in fact.

"Huh," Bow said. He didn't need to squint; his eyesight was fantastic, one of several things that led him to preferring archery as his primary combat style. "Wait a minute."

He broke from the three-man pack, closing the distance as the scorpion-woman walked off. "That's..." Bow sputtered. "That's a thermal mining charge!"

"A what?!" Glimmer said.

"Glimmer," Bow said, "you've gotta get--"

A man in a long red coat fell from the ceiling and landed boot-first on Glimmer's crown. Glimmer supported his weight for a brief second before falling unconscious; the man leapt back and sprayed a noxious cloud of poison from his wrists at Sea Hawk. Oh shit, it was Tomb Gloom.

"Goodness--" Sea Hawk said, rushing to catch Glimmer before she fell and taking a nice lungful of poison. He fell to one knee, coughing and sputtering.

Bow froze in place, unsure what to do--go for the serkhet woman? Get his friends and run? Just stave off Tomb Gloom? And he heard the buzzing of wings just as it was too late.  
Something was upon him--big, bigger than him, wiry and glistening with cybernetics. An arm which was two stick-thin insect limbs bound into one with artificial muscle thrust for his throat.

He dove out of the way and tripped over Sea Hawk, who had succumbed to the poison. The monster was upon him before he could get back onto his feet.

* * *

"Agh--dammit--let me go!" the handsome black teen said, striking blindly at Mosquitor's head as he dragged the teen into the air.

"Not a chance, prettyboy," Mosquitor said, trying to blood-choke the guy to make him more pliable. That wasn't happening, and Mosquitor drifted left and right as his captive fought furiously against him. Perhaps grabbing him and thus putting him well out of reach of his proboscis's business end was a bad idea, Mosquitor thought later.

"Over here," Scorpia said, and Mosquitor obliged. She planted her sting right in the guy's midsection, just above his belly.

The kid squealed in pain, trembling in Mosquitor's grip. He felt his prey's muscles stiffen as his noises tapered off.

Mosquitor dropped him to the ground. "Add 'em to the stack, underlings," he said, gesturing at a pair of guards approaching at a rapid clip.

"No problem, sir," Lonnie (in disguise) said, picking up Bow.

"Man," Scorpia said, laying the Sword of Protection across her shoulder, "this mission is just... man, we're glidin' like butter on a hot skillet tonight."

Gloom blinked. "Where the hell were you hiding that?" he said.

"Hiding what?" Scorpia said.

"The--the giant sword!"

"Oh? ... I was--holy shit, where was I keeping this?" Scorpia said, holding it at arm's length. "Is it 'cause it's magic?"

"Dammit, Gloom!" Mosquitor said, jabbing an accusing finger at him. "You've got her thinking about it, now she'll never be able to hide it!"

"Whatever," Scorpia said, shrugging. "We're moving into the terminal stage of the plan anyway. Once Catra gives us the word, it's you guys' time to shine."

"Yeah..." Gloom said, glancing at his unconscious sister as Kyle struggled to tie her up. "The hour of arrival."

"If I know Catra," Scorpia said, "and I do, with the intimacy of a lover, then she's gonna cause a hell of a distraction before she gives us the signal." She shivered. "Oh, were that I could see it! It's gotta be panty-floodingly majestic!"

"...so you're horny too, huh," Mosquitor said.

"Well, why wouldn't I be?"

"Everybody here smells horny."

"Yeah! A bunch of strapping young princesses and escorts, in the prime of their life, unsupervised, in a bigass ice palace where you can sneak away to bang at any time to any number of semi-public, semi-private _sex chambers_? Why wouldn't they be horny? ... Oh, right. One of us should be on closet-finding duty so we can murder any drunken teenagers making out."

"As is tradition!" Mosquitor said, twirling his spiral beam rifle.

"Tradition," Gloom said.

Scorpia rung up Dragstor. "Hey, Draggy, how's about--okay, if you insist, Dragstor, my man. Say, could you do us a solid and... oh, you are?  Well, we were just gonna ask you to do what you're doing.  ...  Neat!  Bring souvenirs!  See you soon.  Bye, hon.  I mean Draggy.  I mean Dragstor."

* * *

Perfuma lifted up the tablecloth and kneeled to look inside. "Adora?" she said.

"Hey," Adora said, waving. She was tucked into a fetal position underneath the refreshment table for ruminants. "How's the, uh... how's the party?"

"Goodness. You're just having an awful time, aren't you?" Perfuma said, slipping under the table and kneeling besides her. "Between your friends disappearing on you and the appearance of Catra!"

"Yeah. Can you make me something I can take?'

"How about a little magic chemical we call... oxytocin?" She held out her hand. "I can hold you close and we can dance. The first dance is starting soon!"

"And Catra is planning something. And Frosta thinks I'm a, I'm a twitchy paranoiac and she's right, goddammit, and I just..." Adora cradled her head. "I'm freaking out bad and I don't know what to do!"

"Well." She reached into her dress, pulling out a tiny metal tube. "Please don't tell anyone I have this on me." She twisted open the cap and gently tapped out a single rectangular pill. "Have you been drinking?"

"Yes."

"...well, that's unfortunate. You're still getting 8-chloro-1-methyl-6-phenyl--"

"--4Hs-triazolo 4-3-a 1-4 benzodiazepine?!!" Adora said, eyes glittering.

"Yes," Perfuma said, holding out her hand, the pill balanced in a line on her palm. "A small dose! But it should help you process your surroundings--"

Adora licked the pill up and swallowed it.

Perfuma shuddered at the feeling of Adora's tongue on her skin.

"I've heard about this but I have never once had it," Adora said. "Where'd you get it? ... Can you make it?"

"If I had time and an alembic," Perfuma said, holding her hand out further. "Now come on. It's almost time to dance."

Adora took her hand.

"Take a deep breath," Perfuma said, helping her up and out. "And try to relax. Catra can't possibly be intending to ruin the Princess Prom."

"Yeah," Adora said, convinced she could feel the medicine at work already. "It'd be stupid to just..." She steadied herself on the table. "No, I can't finish it. I'd jinx us."

Perfuma had a burst of inspiration and gently kissed Adora's cheek. "Bad luck is just a trick of perception. I promise."

The loudspeakers blared an announcement and excited teens and young adults crowded the dance floor.

"I promise," Perfuma said [as the music began](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617f1ipS6Wc).

* * *

Gloom finished melting a sigil onto the floor with trickles of venom. "Are we ready?" he said, taking his place within the sigil's confines.

"Hell yes," Mosquitor said, crowding in, tucking his wings against his back.

Dragstor, back from patrolling, took his place likewise, unfolding from his vehicle form and standing upright, composed. "Of course."

"Alright," Gloom said. "Hold your breath."

* * *

Adora twirled. "It's just," she said, just above the music, "it's like... it's like she wants me to be mad, you know?"

"She may be provoking you to get you to act up!" Perfuma said, bringing Adora back in for a hug. "If you do, it will look very bad!"

"Yeah, I know," Adora said, resting her head on Perfuma's shoulder. "But I really wanna act out. If I were She-Ra..."

"You are always She-Ra," Perfuma said. "Act like you always are, for the eyes of the world are--oh, hello!"

She spun Adora back out, and Mermista caught her, pulling her into a fierce tango. "Hey," Mermista said.

"Pardon?" Adora said.

"I've been following that chick with the hair," Mermista said. "The purple hair, walks on it?"

"Entrapta?"

"Yeah. 'Cause you were suspicious of her, right?"

"I mean, her priorities are--"

Mermista dipped her low enough that she felt her ponytail pool on the icy floor.

"Hey," Mermista said.

"...yeah?" Adora said. Mermista was pressed against her, her legs spread wide as her dress allowed; they were stomach-to-stomach and chest-to-chest. Adora needed to kick one leg high in the air to maintain balance.

"Do I have a chance?" Mermista said, almost lost to the noise around them. "Like... romantically? Or physically?"

"I don't know," Adora said. "Keep trying. And..." What would Perfuma say? "But don't try too hard. You'll just stress us both out."

"Okay," Mermista said, her expression faltering. "Don't try too hard." She raised Adora up. "Alright. Tactical pass incoming. You ready?"

"For what?" Adora said.

Mermista glided away, and Catra cut in.

[The song changed.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMWL8cOeAU)

"Hey, Adora," Catra said.

"Catra," Adora said.

Don't try too hard, she thought.

They stood still, the world dancing around them.

"What's the matter?" Catra said, adjusting her footing but not really moving. "Scared?"

"Yeah," Adora blurted.

Catra smirked. "Good."

_Scene 3_

  
They danced; by any god who was watching, they danced. They completed each other like a lock completes a key; a sheathe a sword; a bullet a magazine, a magazine a gun; as a gun completes a life. They danced chest to chest, hand in hand, eyes locked.

"Can you sleep without me at your feet?" Catra said.

"Can you sleep where it isn't my bed?" Adora said.

"How's the life of a monster?"

"Rewarding. How's life on a monster's leash?"

"It gets more and more frayed, all the time. They can't keep me down forever."

"Can you break free before I break them?" Adora squeezed her hand tight and pinned her against a pillar. "You couldn't even cast a shadow on the Sea Gate."

"My shadow's on you now..." Catra purred into her ear. "I can feel you squirming. Can you really take us in a fair fight?"

Adora kissed her.

Catra froze in her grasp. Her lips were iron, her eyes wide, her pupils pinpricks.

"Catra," Adora said, her lips still brushing against Catra's, "are you here to hurt people?"

Catra's voice hitched in her throat.

"Is that a yes?"

"It... we're..."

"Catra. If you're going to hurt people, I'm going to stop you. The Horde can't win. I won't let it." She kissed her again, testing Catra's lips with her tongue; she glided in, tasting her.

Bitter wine.

Adora pressed her body tight against Catra's. They could feel each other's swift, pulsing heartbeats.

"What. Are. You. Doing. Here?" Adora said.

Catra shivered. "Hold your breath."

There was a flash of light in the middle of the dance floor, immediately before a cloud of smog rolled outward, engulfing all within. Screaming made distant and without clear direction by the smog overwhelmed the music, soon turning into the noise of hacking and pained breaths. Cutting through the sound was a sharp, hideous strike of metal through flesh.  
Catra had made sure they were on the very edge of the dance floor, just outside the toxins' reach.

"...no..." Adora said.

Three figures strode out of the poison. One was tall, spindly, hunched; a shining red cyberhelm shone on his head, a translucent stomach full of freshly-drunk blood pulsing on his chest. One was broader, seemingly built from the parts of an assault bike. A central wheel spun in his chest below an engine that replaced most of his chest cavity.

And in front was her brother.

["Hey, Adora,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMyoI-Za6z8) Tomb Gloom said.

"Your hair looks stupid," Mosquitor said.

Dragstor said nothing and instead flung something through the air; it skidded along the ground and came to a stop at their feet.

It was a severed head--one of the Princess Prom party-goers. Blue hair, elfin ears, cream-colored fur. She was the size of a child.

Was she a child?

Adora made a little sound.

Tomb Gloom clenched his fist. "I'm sorry it had to be this way," he said.

"Pussy," Mosquitor said. He shouldered his rifle, aimed at Adora's head, and fired.

* * *

"One final mourning chime

for the survivors."

\--Jake Kaufman, "The Impresario"

 


	7. The Impresario, Part 2

"Come cast a stone."

\--ibid.

* * *

_Scene IV_

Mosquitor's first attempt on Adora's life was doomed to failure. For one, Catra had Adora in her grasp; for another, Tomb Gloom was right next to him, and while he had passed on superconducting nerves once he heard what the operation would entail, his new muscle enhancements were good and fast. So Gloom elbowed him in the shoulder, throwing off his aim, and Catra tackled Adora to the ground, and so the twisting particle beam Mosquitor fired merely sheared half of Catra's left ear and an ungainly chunk of her hair.

Catra and Adora hit the ground rough, Catra's hair aflame, and Tomb Gloom said, "What the fuck?!"

"Dude!" Mosquitor said, jabbing him in the chest with two taloned fingers, "I could've wiped out She-Ra right then and there!"

The answer he had rehearsed for this (we can turn her to Hordak and surely the She-Ra would be a force multiplier for us) fell away and he blurted "She's my sister, goddammit."

Mosquitor's dagger-like irises constricted. "So, blood's thicker than water, huh?"

Gloom glared at him, balling his fists.

Dragstor cleared his throat, a noise like a car backing up. "The smokescreen's clearing..."

Gloom's thick smog was, in fact, disappearing. Enormous trees grew from the floor, already dying as they absorbed Gloom's toxins. Guards were helping terrified, breathless and sickly princesses and their guests from the dance floor, and standing strong in the midst of the chaos were Mermista and Perfuma.

Adora found her senses once more. "Run!" she said.

"Not today," Mermista said, cracking her knuckles.

Princess Frosta dropped between them, sliding into place on a wave of ice. "I said 'leave your conflicts at the door,'" she said, "and I darn well meant it."

"Okay, shooting her," Mosquitor said, swinging his gun Frosta's direction. Frosta raised a shield of ice in time to catch Mosquitor's shot; Mermista charged, Perfuma sending herself rushing forward on a vine chariot. Mosquitor took to the air, Dragstor whirled his whip-axe over his head, [and the battle commenced](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cA3AjXFMhQ).

"Catra," Gloom said, moving for Adora, "join them."

"I've got my prey right here--" Catra said, her expression changing once she realized where the strange heat was coming from. Adora punched her in the throat and kicked her off.

Adora was on her feet, and Gloom thrust his hand towards her. His toxic sprayer sent a long, arcing stream of poison at her chest. She ducked away, droplets of poison landing on her bare arm and leaving patches of numbness. He followed it up with a fog bank of poison where Adora was headed; she skidded on the slick floor and barely avoided plunging into it. She scrambled along the floor right at Gloom, rolling under another poison blast, twirling into a handstand and a helicopter kick.

Gloom caught her kick with his elbow; her foot rebounded off as if she'd punted a bent pipe. She hiked back onto her feet. "The hell...?" she muttered.

Gloom assumed his preferred fighting stance. "Hand-to-hand, huh?"

Since Gloom had been cyborgized, every single fight they'd ever had--every sparring session, every moment of frustration that needed to vent in a best-of-three--had ended in Adora demolishing him. She had more experience and wore her body with confidence; that was the end of that.

"Yeah..." Adora said. "Hand-to-hand."

Gloom lunged for her with a straight left; Adora dodged left herself and went for a palm strike against his chin. It was a good hit along his jawline, but pain shot up her arm and he didn't so much as flinch.

He caught her in the stomach with a knee, and the force made her double over, hacking up stomach acid. He grabbed her by the face.

"Breathe," he said, and billowed smoke from his emitter.

With a groan that turned into a cry, Adora freed her hairpin and stabbed him in the emitter, up the dremeled metal into the soft, wet wound on his wrist.

Gloom flinched and in reflex flung Adora away.

* * *

The fight was off to a good start.

Perfuma shouted and sent a trio of vines lashing from her vine chariot at Mosquitor; Frosta kicked up an ice slide and sped past Dragstor, charging toward Catra. Dragstor flung his whip-axe at Mermista, who, sighing inwardly, narrowly dodged the whip and grabbed it just behind the axehead.

Dragstor snapped the handle of the whip to a clip on one of his limb-wheels and revved. Mermista dug in her heels, but there was only so much traction she could gain, and slipped along the floor til her feet left the floor entirely. Dragstor fired off his cylinders and swung her overhead and into the floor; Mermista caught the worst of it with her forearm, but he happily swung her around again and again 'til she was good and mashed up. He finally smacked her onto the ground right before him and stomped on her neck, pressing a wheel where her neck met her chin.

"Choke on it," he said, revving his wheel.

Mermista's vision blurred; obviously breathing was out of the question. She smashed the axe into the back of his knee, knocking him off-balance. She rolled away, axe in hand, struggling for breath, and yanked back on the whip. Dragstor didn't fight back; his arms and legs locked into place, his torso shifted position, and armor slid up his back and over his head, turning him into a Horde assault bike.

He landed on all four wheels, revved up, and went from zero to eighty in three seconds. Mermista dropped the axe and realized too late the whip was good and wound around her legs.

"Goddammit," she muttered, and went along for the ride.

* * *

Catra patted out the fire in her hair. Briefly she wondered how many years of growth she'd lost before she heard the distinct crack of rapidly-forming sheets of ice. She backflipped into the air; daggers of ice sliced past her. She landed on her feet right on the ice princess's sled line thingey. She ran along it on all fours, feeling the ice start to give way behind her feet as she chased Frosta.

Frosta caught wind of what she was doing immediately. Catra found herself running up a tight spiral--she stopped following the curve and flung herself free, just missing a blast of arctic wind freezing the place she had been solid.

She fell two stories and caught a column, just barely, with her claws. She scrambled along the side like a liza... oh, right, like a cat.

Her fingers ached. Climbing like a cat was a lot easier on columns with pores and chipping, not smooth ice. And Frosta was on her.

"Hi-ya!" Frosta said, spraying Catra with a frost spray.

Years of dancing around Tomb Gloom's toxic clouds gave her a good feel for avoiding jet-stream attacks; she sailed over the blast, turning head over heels three times and tackling Frosta off her sled.

Frosta squiggled around in her grasp. She was a feisty one, but she was 11 3/4 years old, and Catra was 18, with 6 1/4 years more experience and a good foot of height on her.

"Nighty-night," Catra said, twisting Frosta around in her grip 'til her head faced the ground, and performed an expert three-story piledriver onto the ice below. There was a terribly loud crack. Catra dropped Frosta and flipped away; the princess lay on the ground, eyes half-closed, blood gushing from her scalp. Her crown had fallen off; it lay in the pool of blood not far away.

She was breathing.

If Catra had to name what she was feeling, it would be "nauseated relief." "Pity," she said needlessly to the princess's still, sprawled body. "No time to finish things up."

She sprinted off.

* * *

Perfuma conjured layers of hardwood over her arms to catch the blast from Mosquitor's particle rifle, sacrificing her vine chariot to bulk it up with knots of kudzu. The wood caught fire and glowed ominously, brightest where the stream was corkscrewing through the wood. She blew a puff of breath at the burning wood and it burst out in a spray of flaming shrapnel at Mosquitor, who ceased fire and flitted away rather than get pelted.

He took aim again, and Perfuma snatched his gun-arm with a vine attached to the floor. She yanked his aim off, then grew a nice thick batch of kudzu down the rifle's barrel. Good luck burning through that, she thought, before Adora tackled her from behind, knocking them both to the ground.

"Adora?" Perfuma said, pushing herself up from the icy floor.

"Present," Adora groaned, helping them both to her feet.

Grunting, Mosquitor pressed the arm-vine against the side of his proboscis. The vibroblades hummed and sliced through quite neatly. He aimed and fired at Adora, only causing a horrible burning smell to rise from his gun. "Ah, dammit!" He slotted his gun onto his back and dive-bombed the plant witch. He didn't hear what Adora said until it was too late:

"Now!"

She yanked Perfuma away, and Mosquitor smacked proboscis-first into the ground, his vibroblades cutting himself good and stuck in the floor. "Oh, son of a--" he said.

Adora kicked him right in the eyeball.

Well, his compound eyes were locked behind a nice heavy-duty optic shell that improved his species' fairly terrible eyesight to something on par with he average Hordesman's vision, but when Adora's heel connected right with his pupil it hurt like a motherfucker.

He covered his eye and whimpered, curling up pathetically. He braced for another attack that didn't come--he didn't realize until he felt the vines around his legs that Adora wasn't just going to keep kicking him like his father used to.

Remembering that he could, in fact, cut his way back out, he did just that, cutting his way out of the nose-hole just in time for Dragstor to roar on past--and in time for Perfuma to tie him to his partner.

"Aw, dammit," Mosquitor said, flying for his life as he got dragged along like a blood-drinking kite.

"HEY!" Mermista shouted as she rocketed past, still stuck to the whip.

"Oh..." Perfuma said. "We missed her."

A thick cloud of toxic smoke washed over them.

* * *

Mermista twisted mid-air as Dragstor rocketed from the ground to the walls, finishing the job of untangling her legs. She rolled into the fall, landing on her feet dizzy and in considerable pain. She lurched toward the cloud of smoke from which Perfuma and Adora were escaping, air-purifying plants growing over their faces. She nearly tripped over a spear one of the guards had dropped during the evacuation of the party.

Which had totally completed by now!

So, hey, at least there's that.

She picked up the spear, tried to force her head to stop swimming, and flung it at the source of all the poison. It sounded like a solid hit, and as the smog tapered off, she saw it was.

Thank you Father Dagon and Mother Hydra for muscles adapted to swimming at depths that would crush a surface-dweller to paste, she thought.

* * *

The spear whistled through the air and struck Tomb Gloom in the chest, puncturing his skin, his subdermal armor, and stopping perilously short of rupturing one of his toxin veins.

Oh, boy, it had been a minute since he felt this particular kind of pain.

He fell to his knees, stunned, and grasped the spear in both hands. Breathing was painful; in fact, he realized, breathing brought the crystalline point of the spear pressing directly into the toxic vein. He held his breath and commanded his muscles to pull at full strength. The spear yanked free, blood trickling from the wound.

"Gloom?" Catra said, approaching from his side. "You alright?"

"Not really, no," he said, dropping the spear. "You?"

"Oh, I'm fine... besides the hair."

"It's a fucking mess, Cat."

"...how bad is it?"

He ran his hand above his head, nowhere near far enough for her tastes.

Process that later, Catra.

"Alright," Catra said, following Dragstor's race around the ballrom with Mosquitor in tow. "We need a plan or the magic girls are gonna thrash us as hard as we thrashed our own asses back at Salineas."

"Cut and run? We have hostages and Dragstor killed a princess."

"...goddammit," Catra said, "that's actually our best option."

A particle beam lanced from Mosquitor's gun, the beam so wide and diffuse it merely sliced an awkward gouge across the floor.

The dark-skinned sea bitch held out her hand and called water from the blasted floor into her hand.

Dragstor ramped off the wall, cutting Mosquitor free mid-transformation to his humanoid shape. He fired off his backblast and divekicked at Mermista, who dipped under him; he struck the ground, bounced off, and flung his whip-axe at her. Perfuma grew a small tree to catch the axe before it struck Mermista, and the sea princess sent a rush of water sweeping over Dragstor. He landed light, not noticing the water had vanished, and transformed again, firing off his cylinders for nearly a second before they crapped out.

"The hell?!" he said, struggling to move. His combustion engine had totally shut down. He could barely keep his balance, much less raise his arms or move his legs. He could just about move his head and nothing else.

Adora advanced on him, dagger in hand.

"Guys, I think I'm--" Dragstor looked around, and saw that Catra and Gloom had vanished on him. He looked up and saw Mosquitor flitting away, too.

Adora loomed over him, turning the dagger around in her hand. "Hello, Dragstor," she said, bitterly.

"Adora," he said. "You know, I think Mosquitor was too harsh about your hair."

"You cut off Princess Laa-See's fucking head," Mermista said, stepping up next to Adora.

Perfuma covered Adora's other side, cracking her knuckles.

"What are you going to do?" Dragstor said. "You never had an appetite for red ops, Adora. Have the princesses taught you how to kill?"

"No," Adora said. "You know, Gloom interned for Modulok a couple weeks. He told me all sorts of things. Like that time he worked on your body." She flipped around the dagger and jabbed it between Dragstor's neck and the cowl of his armor.

"Aw, son of a--" he said in the moment before Adora ejected his head and emergency life support. His body fell limp and crashed on the ground; he swooned into a life-support coma in Adora's hands.

Adora juggled him around. "Alright. One down, three to go." She blinked. "Wait. Where's Frosta?"

Mermista scanned the room 'til she saw a wide patch of pinkish icemelt. Icemelt from a construct of Frosta's that had run its time; pinkish, because it was rich with the princess's spilled blood.

"No..." Mermista muttered.

Adora returned her dagger-hairpin to her ponytail. "Son of a..."

* * *

Shadow Weaver shrieked. "Those monsters! Those vile, unspeakable--"

"He'll make it," Modulok said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She smacked his hand away hard enough to send the disembodied arm flopping to the floor, where it crawled away. "I built him strong. He won't break so easily."

"It's not that he'll break," Shadow Weaver said. "It's that they hurt him."

"Patience," he said. "They'll suffer terribly, and soon. Especially once they find how much we've walked off with."

Shadow Weaver pulled Modulok's gift from one of her sleeve pockets. It resembled a grip exercise device, a soft rubber grip with a high-tension spring attached to a long, thin plate.

"You have ideas for him?" Modulok said.

"I may," she said. "If the opportunity arises.

On the screen, through her son's eyes, they saw him rushing down the halls, trickling blood behind him, hammering out a final plan at a rapid clip with Catra.

* * *

Scorpia jolted upright in her seat, realizing that she had nodded off listening to her favorite music. Things must be going so smoothly that there was nothing to be awake for; thus she must have instinctively caught up on her Z's.

She felt a strange twinge. Maybe it was the cold, and how it was starting to bug her--

Dammit, there was the b-word again. Mosquitor's flagrant use was starting to get to her. She would have to give him a lengthy speech on how even if it was "their word" it didn't mean they should use it so willy-nilly, if at all, especially because of the context of--

"Wait," she thought aloud. "Dictionarily speaking, a 'bug' is an insect with sucking mouthparts and thickened forewings. Mosquitor has the sucking mouthparts but not the thickened forewings. While he's more of a b-word than I am, he's still not a true... true b-words. I should, in fact, put him and Acrobad in a room together so they can discuss the relative merits of--"

Lonnie cracked open the door and peeked inside. "Hey, the prisoners are starting to stir. Can you give 'em a sting so they don't try to escape?'

"Oh! Huh. Yeah, I should," Scorpia said. "One sec."

* * *

It took five minutes to get Frosta back on her feet and hand off Dragstor's head with the medics outside the party. It gave Catra and Gloom and Mosquitor five minutes to get themselves good and lost inside the palace.

"Damn it," Adora said.

"God damn it," Adora said.

" _God damn every goddamn one of them!_ " Adora said, squeezing so tight onto Perfuma it made it hard to breathe. "Goddamn them!"

"I'm sensing a great deal of anger," Perfuma said as she steered a vine chariot through the frosty halls of the ice palace.

"They've killed a dozen people and nobody's seen Glimmer, or Bow, or... or even Sea Hawk..."

Frosta glided alongside her, her flight uneven and her pace halting. She had gotten on her feet with some coaching and a stimpack from a first-aid kit, but she was far from alright. Her little head was heavily swaddled and her pupils were not quite even yet. Mermista rode with her, coasting along on skates of suspended water and keeping her steady.

"All my worst dreams are coming true," Adora said, more brightly than she intended. "And now..."

They entered a wide open room, a long and broad staircase winding around a support column. The night sky in all its endless darkness winked at them on the other side. It was freezing, even moreso than elsewhere in the palace, and the sudden shift in temperature bid Adora's eyes widen.

She saw something fist-sized, red and blinking on the support column.

"What the--" she said.

* * *

_Scene V_

Just around the bend, Gloom dug the detonator out of his pocket and hit the button. "And... go."

Catra covered her ears and flinched away from the noise to come.

* * *

The evacuees were herded outside of the palace where the cool-kids party had been carrying on. Guards and medics handed out hot tea and snacks to those who were rattled but intact and spread their medicine and precious healing magics out among those who had been wounded or maimed, or who had a particularly averse reaction to the poison cloud. It was miserable goings all around.

"Heh," Sweet Bee said, "bet you're glad they kicked us out, huh?"

"Cover your head," Peekablue said, doing exactly that.

"Wha?" Sweet Bee said moments before the explosions began and chunks of ice palace began to rain overhead. A snowball-sized ice chunk bounced off of her head. " _Aw, fuck!_ Ow, damn, ow, ow, damn that hit my antenna! Aw, _shit,_ that hurts!"

"Told you," Peekablue sighed.

"You could've been more--why you gotta be so goddamn cryptic all the time, Blue?"

"It is the curse of an oracle," she said.

* * *

Adora clawed her way back to consciousness, chasing [the ringing in her ears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN6sfJ1qFQg) the way someone underground would chase light. She felt Perfuma lying on her. She shook her, trying to wake her; the princess of Plumeria moaned. "Hurts..." she muttered.

"Hurts all over," Adora said, climbing to her feet with Perfuma hanging off of her.

The column was blown completely; slabs and chips of ice lay scattered across the stairs. The roof began to crack, ominous-looking flakes and chunks of frozen roof plummeting down the central shaft.

Mermista had taken the brunt of the hurt for Frosta; they emerged from behind one of the larger slabs, which Frosta had stopped from smashing Mermista, or at least herself under Mermista, flat. "We're alright over here," Mermista said. "Bu-u-ut I think we should be getting out of here. Like, quick."

"Y-yeah," Frosta said. "This whole ceiling will go in a few minutes. ...friggin'... _friggin'_ Horde..."

Gloom stepped out from around the curve and sprayed poison smog at Adora and Perfuma, going full bore with both sprayers.

"Shit!" Adora said, covering her mouth and nose.

Perfuma conjured a mask for herself, but before she could adorn Adora Gloom crossed the distance in five full-strength strides; she tried to conjure something to slow him down, but she succeeded only in catching his hand before he punched her straight in the jaw. She fell back, dazed, eyes unfocused, against the wall.

He moved to strike Adora, but she moved into his reach, her dagger in hand, and stabbing him right where Mermista had impaled him earlier. He cried out, stumbling back and tripping over melting debris, and Adora stabbed him again and again, tears streaking down her face--tears of stinging poison, tears of despair--hurling agonized, gibberish invectives.

Mermista pulled her off Tomb Gloom. "Damn it, Adora," she said, warmly, "don't kill him."

Icy-cold water brushed her face, purging her eyes of poison. The cloud was already fading.

"We've got him," Mermista said, wrapping his arms and legs with water and lifting him into the air. Frosta froze the water solid, keeping him immobile and incapable of spraying poison, and they let him fall onto the ground, helpless. "We can put this whole awful night behind us."

"Wait," Frosta said. "What about... what about Glimmer? And Bow?"

"We have two prisoners, we can do an exchange," Mermista said. "Fair trade--"

A twisting particle beam lashed past her, barely missing--and striking Gloom's right limb true, cracking the ice. Grunting, he flexed his arm free.

"Dammit," Mermista said, calling up more water to her hand.

His hand held still for a beat; a strange expression crossed his face. He went for the stake at his belt.

The rotten old wooden stake at his belt.

Recognition flashed in Adora's eyes. "Duck!" she said, going for Mermista.

* * *

Gloom tried to direct a poison cloud at Adora.

His plan was simple: distract them, get the hell out of there. Why would he even bother fighting? His last-ditch attempt at rescuing his sister had ended as poorly as it could have ended and Scorpia was one quick run away--and Mosquitor was providing covering fire.

So why was he going for the stake? He fought the reflex, but his hand moved of his own accord...

...oh no.

There were words at his lips he could never take back.

Don't do this. Don't do this. _Don't do this. Don't do this._

_Don't do this--_

* * *

Modulok had no time to stop her.

Shadow Weaver grasped the control grip in her hand, squeezing tight and issuing a command. She whispered a spell, and on the screen, her son spoke it.

* * *

  
He wound back and made his throw and shouted:

" _Exklopios Quachil Uttaus!_ "

The stake flew through the air. Adora pulled Mermista out of the way; the stake brushed the fine hairs on Mermista's arm. It kept going, past Mermista, and buried itself in Frosta's shoulder. "Ach!" Frosta said, stumbling back. "You jerk! You absolute--"

A column of gray light stabbed from the cracked ceiling, engulfing Frosta like a spotlight. As she stepped back, she left the floor, as if gravity had gently faded away.

"No," Adora said.

"What in the hell...?" Mermista said.

"No, no--" Tomb Gloom said. "Oh, gods, no--"

Adora rushed for the column of light. "No, no, no no _no no no_ \--"

"What's happening?" Frosta said, her voice small. She was rising, not far, not fast, but she was detaching from Etheria nonetheless.

"Get the stake," Gloom said, "grab it and--" His voice seized; no matter how hard he tried to tell her what to do, his voice stayed locked as if a vise were pushing apart the walls of his throat.  
Adora forced her hand into the gray light. It was like trying to punch through feet of snow compressed overnight. "Hold still," she said, going for the stake in Frosta's shoulder.

Overhead, the gray light melted a hole through the ceiling. There was a change in the quality of the gray light, as though a hand had briefly brushed over an unseen projector, but there was nothing Adora or Mermista could see there.

"What is it?" Frosta said. She was crying, her tears floating upward. " _What the hell is it?_ "

"The Treader in Dust," Adora said. "My... my brother's god." She had never seen Quachil Uttaus; supposedly, as Gloom explained to her, only the spell's victim could see the coming of the Treader of Dust, Who Waits at the End of Time.

She tried to pull the stake free; her muscles strained, liable to break the bonds of her skin.

Mermista thrust her hand into the light, wrapping her hand around Adora's, and with a pained gasp they freed the stake from Frosta's wound; the blood bubbled up towards the descending god as the two women flew free of the light, stumbling back. The stake fell from their hands.

"What now?" Mermista said.

"I don't know," Adora said. She stared at the stake. "I don't know."

"Here," Frosta said. Her eyes were huge, bulging out of their sockets, brimming with tears. "It's here, _it's here,[it's here it's here it's here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmBTJqyjcnw)\--"_

Mosquitor slammed into the ground nearby, grabbed Gloom, and flew back off, not even bothering with a potshot. "Adios, motherfuckers!" he said.

Mermista had the strength to flip him off. "You can't not know," Mermista said.  "What's the thing?  What--what do we have to do?"

Adora closed her eyes. "It can't be cancelled. We have to... we have to sacrifice something. Another living thing..."

Frosta was shrieking and sobbing. Her tears and blood flowed up into the light; meters over her, her blood brushed against something, something invisible, and at the touch of the invisible thing her blood dried to a powdery brown stain and then to fine dust and then to nothing.

"...Adora," Mermista said, breathing heavily, "it's been good knowing you."

"No," Adora said. She held the stake close to her chest. "It's not right. We... oh, God, we... we can't just..."

Perfuma stumbled away from the wall. "Does it have to be a person? Can it be..."

"I don't know," Adora said.

"Let's try this," Perfuma said, holding out her hands. Her hair floated delicately, as if she were underwater; the flowers in her hair multiplied and bloomed. A tree, small but strong, grew from the stair. The bark split open between a cluster of three branches, revealing delicate sapwood.

Adora turned the stake in her hand, grasped it firmly, and with a desperate shout lunged at the tree, bringing the stake into the sapwood.

The brittle, moldering stake punched clean into the tree as if the stake were made of steel.

The light flickered, dimmed, and bent in midair as if reflecting off an invisible mirror and onto the tree.

Frosta fell, and Mermista caught her.

"Mama?" Frosta said. Her hair had turned milky-white; it hung loose and frail about her head. "Mama? Are you there?" She trembled like a newborn kitten and curled up in Mermista's strong arms. "Mama, I'm scared... mama, I saw a monster..."

Mermista held her tight, stroking her shocked hair, and wept bitterly into the nape of her neck.

The invisible thing descended upon the tree. A decade of rot overtook it at once; the leaves burst into colors of flaming fall, fell from the branches and as if burned shriveled to black curls and rained in a fine black mist. The tree withered, its young bark cracking and drying, its sapwood splintering; it split, crumbled, fell apart, and in seconds the whole tree, nearly four foot tall at its perihelion, had turned to dust.

The light flickered once more and vanished.

In the dust of the tree were two tiny, gnarled footprints.

Adora stared at the footprints. Her heart was a faint stutter in her chest. Her head was splitting with agony. She only now realized just how badly she had been tossed around. There would be no shedding the pain as She-Ra could shed pain. This would be a friend. Even when it healed, its memory would be with her.

The pain of Catra and Gloom.

"...bring Frosta to the medics," Adora said, retrieving her dagger. She had dropped it in the rush to save Frosta. "I'm going after them."

"Adora!" Mermista said, but she was already off like a shot. She bit her lip, counted to two, and held the wounded child out to Perfuma. Perfuma took Frosta, though with substantially less grace than Mermista, and blessedly Frosta latched onto her as surely as she had onto the princess of Salineas. "This is gonna end badly, I know it," Mermista said. "But... I'll go after her. She won't get herself killed. I'll make sure."

"Make sure," Perfuma said, conjuring a vine chariot--smaller than what she had conjured before, for her mana was flagging at last--and rushed down the stairs to the nearest exit she could remember.

Mermista took a deep breath and followed after Adora.

After realizing she actually had to run, she took a moment to shred her dress's skirt and followed at a much faster clip.

* * *

"Nyoom!" Mosquitor said, flying past Catra at a blazing clip.

"Fuck off," Catra said, not shouting, but not whispering. The sound was lost to the wind. Scorpia's transport hovered a few stories below, waiting for her to jump on. She waited for Mosquitor to flit inside; only then would she bother making the leap. If nothing else, him and Gloom would be the bellweather for whatever fresh disaster may appear at the last minute, waiting to bite them in the ass.

Sure enough, the transport began to move--not away, which would piss her off to no end, but veering shockingly close to the cliff, then further away. Wild guess, she thought, somebody's shaken off the poison and tried to escape. If she were a betting magickat--and she was--she would put good money on Kyle being at the controls no matter how many times people shouted at him to stay the fuck away from the throttle.

He was actually pretty good at driving. Just--well, why give him a break?

The transport steadied at last--yeah, there would be no escape--and she took a deep, steadying breath. She knelt, peering. Was there some movement near the end of the ship? Yeah, one of the side doors, near the curve of the ship's scorpion-tail weapon mount, slid open.

A massive red claw jut out into the cold, a dark-skinned body held out at arm's length. Huh! Bow made it out? And was Scorpia actually--

Oh, she dropped him.

"Okay," Catra groaned. "Good call, idiot--"

A thrown hairpin-dagger buried itself in her shoulder.

Adora's scream hit her ear a moment later, and, a moment later, Adora grabbed her by the jacket and threw her to the ground, pinning her beneath her body.

"Not tonight," Adora said. "You're not--"

The palace collapsed.

Not the whole thing no; just this wing. The outer layers of the castle wall--mere yards away--cracked like glass and sheets of ice fell, surreally, like curtains, shearing away and into the abyss surrounding the palace. The crack spread down the inner layer of the wall, to the platform they stood on, and piece by piece everything fell.

Adora grabbed Catra by the collar and dragged her away; a sheet of ice fell from below her foot, and she lost her footing, and she was going to fall, fall forever and die a red smear somewhere in the ice shelf below, forgotten forever, a footnote in the Horde's conquest of Etheria, and Catra would be alone forever.

So Catra seized her by the breast of her dress; Adora caught herself with her other leg, and for the longest, most precarious moment, the two hung in suspension, the world falling away around them, Catra's hand on her breast, Adora's life in her hands.

Their eyes met.

Catra's eyes were bleary, terrified, exhausted.

Adora's were aflame, determined, eternal.

It could have been a miracle. [It could have been perfect.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTgvNsqb9Y)

Mosquitor, alas, was just too good a shot.

The particle beam sliced Catra's arm off just short of the shoulder; Adora lost her balance and fell, Catra's right hand still grasping her dress, blood trailing in the air like a ribbon, and they fell towards the personnel carrier; not that Catra saw, but the carrier had tilted mid-air, the better to catch Adora.

And Scorpia did catch Adora; and it was trivial to sting her in the neck and send her into a paralytic coma; and Gloom would lock her in place next to his other sister, his father's child by a devil mother, and he would sit between them and he would see Laa-See's head skip across the ground trailing blood and he would see Frosta dying and he would feel his hand acting against his will and he would pray to any god that listened:

May I have been born dead. May I have never been, for I am ruin.

Bow saw the scorpion-shaped transport ship fly off. He saw Adora fall into it; he saw the craft take off without any further trouble. Sweet Bee complained the entire time she had him in her arms, asking why he had to work out so much, and why did he have to put on so much muscle mass before prom, the buff look is out; and later, Peekablue would apologize that she could not do more, could not rescue them all, because if she did, she would die, and Sweet Bee would die, for the Horde were done here and the transport ship had more than its share of plasma and explosives and tempting them into turning the ship around and pulling every single trigger would be the easiest thing in the world.

Catra fell forever, landing in darkness, and her last thought before the night took her was: she loves me. She still loves me. Against everything I am, Adora loves me, and I can go to Bastet knowing that one person in all of Etheria cared that I was ever born, if I have a soul to send to Her and She would have me.

Her body hit the ruined floor. Mermista snagged her by the collar and fucking booked it, hoisting her onto her back and running, running, before the entire wing of the palace crumbled and fell into nothing; she skated on icemelt, hurled herself into the air on legs powerful enough to propel her from the sea, and she made it.

She made it.

* * *

 

_The Impresario: Ending_

And the Horde had Adora,

and the Horde had the Sword of Protection,

and as if in a dream

Etheria stood

(the lip of the edge slipping beneath its toenails like slivers of bamboo)

at the edge

of the hungry void.

* * *

"Before too long

I'll

be

with

you."

\--ibid.

 


	8. The Lost Children

 

"I heard her

screaming like a radio."

\--Acid Bath, "The Bones of Baby Dolls"

* * *

 

Catra awoke from a hideous nightmare, screaming and crying--

\--and trapped. She was tied down, couldn't move.

She popped her claws and sliced open her confines. She kicked her left side free, but when she flexed her right shoulder she found a near-intact sheet blocking her. She grunted, telling her claws to spring, and there was nothing. Her fingertips glided against stiff paper. Her fingers felt blunt, cold, as if she'd slept on her arm, which was strange given she had been pinned down flat on her back.

Half trapped, she looked around, seeking an exit, waiting threats. She was in a cool, blue-colored room, a bas relief of vague curving shapes bisecting the walls with a darker shade. A smartglass window let in light that was just enough to see by but not enough to be harsh on sleep-accustomed eyes. She was alone.

She struggled to remove her right arm from the covers and saw what her captors had done to it.

Her arm was trapped in a thing of gray plastic over a core of black, articulated carbon. She touched the fingertips; they were soft, even squishy, with a texture like rubber. She turned the arm around. It was a gauntlet, maybe. She had been struck in the arm by Mosquitor's particle beam, after all. It must've been fucked up pretty badly. This stupid thing was keeping it intact.  
But still she needed to see her arm. She had to see how bad the damage was.

She felt for the seam. She ran her fingers, her free fingers, up the arm until she found what she was looking for hidden underneath thick bandages. She sliced them free and saw the join where a permanent cyberprosthetic socket had been bolted over her shoulder.

Her arm was gone.

Her head grew light. Her heart thudded in her ears. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead.

It had not been a nightmare; [it had been a memory.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RLQwbTtVX0)

She could have screamed again; she could have clawed her cyberlimb off; she could have torn up her thighs, bitten her tail, drawn a cut down her jaw.

She took her head in her hands and bawled.

There was no kind of pain she could inflict upon herself that could make her feel worse.

* * *

Adora awoke in chains.

She looked around. She was seated on a mattress laid atop bare stone. Her arms were locked in the Talent-suppression gauntlets favored by the Horde, the green-glowing cables plugged into the wall just behind her head. Catra's arm was nowhere to be seen--last she remembered she was cradling it to her chest, crying into it, before the scorpion-woman sent her into an agonized sleep.

The room was not as plain as she was used to seeing Horde prisons. There were paintings of regal Serkhet astride chitinous mounts or posing in front of stylized globes of Etheria; their faces were scratched out or painted over with the Horde insignia. Also, Sea Hawk was here, seated to her right.

"Good morrow, Adora," he said.

"Where are we?" Adora said.

"A fair question!" Sea Hawk said. "I believe I have overheard that we are in the Palace of the Ebon Sting. Have you heard of such a place?"

"Yeah," Adora said. "That's the palace of the old Serkhet monarchy, back before the Horde came to Etheria."

"Interesting! What happened to the place once the Horde arrived?"

"They capitulated and now they're part of the Horde."

"...magnificent! What a fresh new challenge has been laid on top of all the other challenges that have been laid before us like a mountain of lumber."

Adora smiled weakly. "Have any other intel for us?"

"Come to think of it," Sea Hawk said, scratching his chin, "I heard our location in the midst of a remarkably loud screaming-match between the red one, Mosquitor, and the gray one, Scorpia, in regards to who gets who. I believe the handsome man with the carrying handle on his jacket proposed a solution!"

"...a solution to what?"

"Why, who would be the one to get the pirate and who would get the princess. Glimmer, that is. The pirate is me."

"Who would be getting Glimmer, Sea Hawk?'

* * *

Mosquitor was up in the cab, so it was only Glimmer and Gloom in the transport.

Glimmer was bound in a Talent suppression field, glittering red and faintly crackling. She had stared at Gloom in silence since she had woken up, and Gloom stared at her when he wasn't fixated on the Sword of Protection resting across his lap.

There had been a needless blowup over "who got who"--as Mosquitor put it, he had promised to bring something to Modulok for some vaguely-described debt, and he didn't want "the pirate." Scorpia wanted to keep the captives "warm" in anticipation for Catra returning to the Fright Zone. Gloom had settled it by offering Glimmer and the Sword of Protection for Modulok to look at.

This gave him some time alone with his half-sister, and to keep Adora as far away from her magic weapon as possible.

The Sword of Protection was a pain to lift. Even in his lap it felt less like a sword and more like a crossbeam. He presumed magic or hyperscience were involved; there would be no way a baseline like Adora could swing the sword so casually, much less carry it strapped to her back.

The silence hit its limit, and one of them had to speak. It so happened Gloom took the initiative. He considered the dozens of things he could say ("Your rebellion is doomed," "Adora is ours again and you won't be stealing her from us again," "That stomp-on-my-head stunt gave me migraines for a week,") and settled on, "What was dad like?"

Glimmer stared at him. She thought of a good one-liner ("You'll die never knowing, you pus-blooded bastard") and said, "He could never hide when he was really happy. There was this spell he knew that he could cast just by thinking about it--it made these little glowing fairy-things flutter around in the corner of your eye. No matter how fast you turned your head you'd just barely miss them. It was like someone was celebrating Winterlight in my peripheral vision."

"Really," Gloom said. "Shadow Weaver said he was her best student. I can't imagine casting a spell just by thinking about it. I can't even work combat magic worth a damn. It's all Talent, all the time." He turned his wrists up; the emitter that Adora had spiked twitched, twisting the nerves. He winced in pain.

Glimmer pursed her lips, but she did so into a wry grin. "Yeah. Great sorcerer. Kind man. You could always count on him to lighten the mood with a bad joke. Sing embarrassing old songs when he got drunk... and he didn't drink that much, or get drunk that often. He knew when to step out of the way and when to take center stage. He... really liked marshmallows." She made a soft sound, that half-laugh, half-sigh that men do. "Like, a lot. I think we ate an entire bag between me and him last time we camped, and I only had a few."

"What are marshmallows?"

Glimmer blinked. "Pardon?"

"I don't know what those are. If I knew, I'd probably say... I dunno. Something smart-alecky about marshmallows."

"Like, 'are you sure you didn't eat more than him 'cause you're marshmallow-shaped?'" Glimmer said.

"Are you?" Gloom said. "Shaped like a marshmallow, I mean?"

"Kinda," Glimmer said, shaking her hips. "At least in the middle."

A little silence.

"...did our dad ever talk about my mom?" Gloom said.

Glimmer's tentative smile fell away.

"Didn't have much good to say, huh?"

"What did your mom tell you about my dad?" Her voice was low, trembling, barley above the noise of the engines and the crackle of the suppression field.

"Not a lot," Gloom said, adjusting his grip on the Sword of Protection. "That he was a great student... that he was handsome and passionate. And that I look more like him when I'm clean-shaven."

Glimmer shuddered, her face screwing into an empathetic grimace.

Gloom said nothing. He waited. Perhaps Mystacor had gotten to his father at last. Perhaps he had forgotten all about Shadow Weaver in the grips of Angella, who was said to be ancient and possessed of blackest magics after the Fall. In the hand of the Adversary, Angella Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil herself, what else could be expected?

"Your name is Tomb Gloom, right?" Glimmer said.

"...yeah. Did you forget?"

"I... I need to make sure I get it right. I can't screw this up." She breathed, and said, "Tomb Gloom, my dad... our dad... he was thirteen when Shadow Weaver raped him."

The transport lurched to a stop as it latched onto an umbilicus.

Tomb Gloom's skin was normally an ashen gray; Glimmer had no idea he could lose even more color than that. Now he was white as fresh milk.

A handful of scattered puzzle pieces assembled in his mind and the picture it formed was so clear and complete that he had no doubt that Glimmer was telling the truth. Perhaps it was a deception by the Adversary; perhaps that was why she said it. But in the moment, the realization of connection was so powerful that the idea of being lied to had been blasted out of his mind completely.

The guards entered the transport and hauled Glimmer out by the rig she was attached to. They waited at the door until Gloom remembered he had to come along, too, and, dragging the Sword of Protection behind him like an anchor, he followed the guards out the door and towards a final destination.

* * *

Someone knocked at Catra's door.

"Are you gonna kill me?" she shouted at the door, not moving her face away from the pillow.

"No!" the dark-skinned guy--what was his name again, Bone?--said. "No, nothing like that! We just wanna talk."

"Whatever. Not like I can keep you out."

The door opened, and a bunch of people walked in. The sterile smell of her room was suddenly tinted by the smell of roses. She recognized that smell, if only secondhand. It had clung to Adora, and it had been her perfume when they danced.

(More than danced.)

"Hello," Bone said. "I... guys, help me out here, I don't even know where to begin."

"We made you a new arm!" Entrapta said.

Catra turned around and sat up.

Entrapta was out front in the crowd of people, holding out what she presumed was an arm-shaped gun wrapped in a green towel. Entrapta was smiling ear-to-ear in the same way she had kept smiling last night. Behind her was--Bow, that was it--Bow, looking flustered; Perfuma was at his left, waving gently; and in the back were Mermista and Frosta. Frosta's head was swaddled in bandages and her hair had gone completely white; judging by that expression she was as disappointed in Catra being alive as Catra was.

"New arm, huh," Catra said. She tapped her cyberlimb. "So what the hell is this? A placeholder?"

Entrapta reached out with one of her giant ponytails and tapped the bicep of Catra's cyberarm. The word "TEMP" was tampographed onto its surface, above braille spelling out the same thing. "Yes!" Entrapta said.

"Shut the fuck up," Catra said. Mermista looked down at Frosta, perhaps thinking about covering her ears, but deciding against it.

"...uh," Entrapta said, "what was wrong, what I did, just now?"

"If I may guess," Perfuma said, "perhaps it was because--"

"Just show me the damn arm," Catra said. "Let's get this over with and you can do whatever it is you're gonna do to me."

Entrapta shrugged and unwrapped what proved to, in fact, be a cyberarm. For the briefest moment Catra thought it might have had cloned skin, or else shockingly color-matched skin, before she saw the metallic glint.

It was a fair approximation of her lost arm. The joints were clearly outlined; the fingers looked dizzyingly complex for the number of joints and joins. There were soft, curving lines showing where plates could be removed for repair or diagnostics; there was a little extra bulk in the bicep, maybe for extra machinery. Entrapta turned it around on the towel, showing it from all angles.

"We've been workin' on it all morning," Entrapta said. "Well, me, all morning, Bow had stuff to do to help all the hospital people, and Perfuma's been making medicines and stuff, but I was all, well, I like robots and stuff, cyber-stuff should be cool too." She flexed the arm; the way its mechanical musculature moved was damn near organic. "I know you have those claw things you like to use!"

"Yes," Catra said, raising her left arm and popping her claws. "Being a magickat I am a _little bit_ attached to the most important part of my anatomy."

"Right!" Entrapta said. "So we can't quite get that whole 'magickat claw thing' right without a lot more magic than we had on-hand, bu-u-u-t..." She whipped out a multitool with one ponytail and fiddled with the socket end of the arm, gently raising the limb's hand up with her other ponytail.

With a soft twist, the fingertips split and steel-gray scalpel blades popped free. Entrapta made a minute adjustment and a brilliant white arc burned along the scalpels' edges. The sound was faintly electric and pleasantly... mineral, yes, mineral, like a whetstone in use.

"Eh? Eh?" Entrapta said, wiggling the arm a bit. "The glowy super scratcher power was Bow's idea."

"...so you're just gonna give that to me?" Catra said.

"Yeah," Frosta said, "she almost cracked my skull open on the cold ground, so let's give her a hand." She paused. "Nothing? Nothing at all? I've been sitting on that one for an hour, you gotta gimmie something."

Perfuma clapped.

"Thank you."

Bow tapped Entrapta's shoulder; with a little more hand gestures and then just telling her, she got the hint and turned it off.

"Catra," Bow said, "we lost a lot of people. Some got killed, some got kidnapped. And your own people shot your arm off and left you for dead just to kidnap one more person."

"Well," Catra said darkly, "if you put it like that it sounds kind of bad."

"And you did some black magic on me!" Frosta said, pointing at her hair. "That guy in the red threw a stake in my shoulder and... things happened."

"A stake?" Catra said. "Like, a rotten one?"

"Yeah! So you know about the thing that tried to kill me, again, huh?" She elbowed between Bow and Perfuma; Mermista didn't even make an attempt to corral her. "Were you gonna kill me? Huh? Was I on your hit list?"

"No," Catra said "My brother wouldn't do that. He brought that along in case She-Ra showed up. It's his dickbag co-workers who like to murder people. So, what, did Adora turn into She-Ra? Did he miss you?"

Frosta shook her head vigorously.

"No," Mermista said. "We had him on the ropes--he tried to toss it at me, Adora pulled me out of the way, and, well..."

"If you say I was 'unlucky' I'm gonna freeze your nose off," Frosta said, balling her hands into fists.

Perfuma tried to pat her on the shoulder; Frosta made a shocked sound and elbowed her in the knee. This disrupted the gathering a bit, and it gave Catra time to think.

About, in particular, the person(s?) that had been working with her brother.

"...so," Catra said. "You want to get Adora back, and the princess."

"And Sea Hawk," Bow said, looking away from Frosta quietly patching things with Perfuma, who was terribly hurt both by the elbowing and by having accidentally tripped one of Frosta's new fear-wires.

"Yeah," Catra said. "Let me guess. Adora knew the Fright Zone, but she's not here. She's in the Fright Zone... and so is Shadow Weaver. And I know for damn sure that my bro wouldn't try to kill Mermista, he's too much of a wuss to kill someone with his own hands. Hell, he's tried killing people with summoned monsters, the best he can manage is telling them to go 'rampage' somewhere so he doesn't verbally order them to kill. Throwing a spell like that at a person? That's not something he'd ever do."

"So who did?" Frosta said, somewhat strained through a mighty Perfuma-hug.

"I have a hunch," Catra said, tugging at her temporary arm. "So, let's just get this straight. I don't want Adora in Shadow Weaver's hands any more than you do. I have a strong suspicion that Shadow Weaver... maybe she has hooks in my brother. Maybe through his new upgrades. So, we're going to set things right, and then we keep this war going like civilized people. And I'll take your dumb scratch-sound arm. And maybe, I dunno, that'll show Hordak that you people aren't immune to reason. How's that sound? Huh?"

"Do you want us to return that one guy's head, too?" Mermista said.

"Dragstor? Fuck 'em, I hate that guy." Catra ran her claw along the seam. "So, do I just... is there a button?"

"I'll do it!" Entrapta said, stepping over with a new set of multitools in her hair. "Do you have any painkillers? Like on a button?"

"I haven't really checked," Catra said. "Why do you--" Entrapta slipped a razor-thin releasing tool into the seam and activated the neural disconnector, which felt like Catra losing her arm anew.  The sound of her agonized scream echoed down the medical wing.

  
Perfuma produced a syrette from a pouch she had created earlier in the morning to hold all the medical supplies she had created. "Morphine?" she said, readying a needle for what looked like a tiny foil toothpaste tube.

" _Fuck, hurry_ ," Catra said as Entrapta lined up the contact points of the scratch-power arm with her node.

Perfuma ran her hand along Catra's left arm and kissed a place near her bicep. A vein rose to the surface of her skin; she pressed the needle in and squeezed the tube flat. Catra pressed against the bedrest, teeth clenched, panting in agony as Entrapta clicked the contacts into place. With a meaty, metallic _chook,_ Entrapta plugged the arm in all the way, and the drugs hit Catra's head at last.

She slipped down the bedrest, gurgling. "Fuck," she said.

"If I may, Entrapta?" Perfuma said, looking up from Catra. She idly pat an antiseptic pad over the injection site.

"Yeah?" Entrapta said, picking up the temporary limb.

"Please give people a chance to anesthetize before taking their arms off," Perfuma said, tersely. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

"I've never had a robot complain," Entrapta said, "and I've programmed some of them to feel pain.  Hey, that rhymed!"

Perfuma's eyebrow twitched violently.

"Okay," Bow said, gently leaning over the bed. "We're gonna give Catra some time to recover. We're gonna plan, maybe catch a few Z's because I don't know how many of us actually got any sleep last night."

"I got plenty," Frosta said. "Just put her on a cot and we ride for the Fright Zone. She'll be good to go when we get there."

"You're not coming," Bow said, gently.

"My castle got exploded, a bunch of people died, and the jerk who tried to kill me a second time is out there and you won't let me kill the first. So yeah, I'm coming."

"You almost died," Perfuma said, also gently.

"Yeah? So did all of you! And you're jumping right back in!"

"Let's table this," Mermista said. "How about that? We prepare, we get back to this later. Let's not make a thing out of jumping into problems headlong without thinking about it."

* * *

"On three," Adora said.

A drop of sweat on her forehead trickled off and onto her futon. She was standing nearly parallel to the bed, feet on the wall, flexing hard enough that the cables were taut.

"One one-thousand!" Sea Hawk said. "Two one-thousand! And--three!"

Adora roared, putting every awful thought, every anxious supposition, every drop of despair and horror she'd felt in the past twenty-four hours into one massive flex, and succeeded in tearing something and flopping face-down onto her bed. The padding was not thick enough to make a two-foot drop pleasant.

"Fuck," she said into the futon.

There were two crisp knocks, and the door into the chamber squealed open. "Knock knock!" Scorpia said, peeking her head through the cracked opening. "Hey, quick question, do either of you have food allergies or restrictions I should know about?"

"Fuck off," Adora said, muffled by futon.

"You know," Sea Hawk said, "I simply do not enjoy the taste of cilantro. I have tried it in a dozen dishes and it always tastes off."

"Alright, excellent!" Scorpia said. "'Cause my people don't have much time to make like a meal-meal, but my chefs just made a really bitchin' charcuterie board on short notice, and, well, that's meat and cheese and bread and--oh, one of the cheeses is made with breast milk, but Serkhet babies don't really drink milk? We have teeth right out of the egg so we just eat like rats and things and lactation is kind of one of those throwback things, so it's not weird! We got milk, we gotta do something with it." She laughed. "I mean, what do you people do with your... what do you make that's edible?"

Sea Hawk was about to speak when Adora lifted her head at last. "You're the princess of the Serkhet, right?" she said. "I remember that much."

"Yes!" Scorpia said, stepping in all the way. "And hi, I'm Catra's best friend, and between you and me I think she's--"

"Where's Glimmer?" Adora said.

"Oh, I sent her off with Mosquitor and Tomb Gloom. She's fine! Nobody's gonna lay a finger on her, she's too important to risk."

"You're sure about that?" Adora said.

"100%," Scorpia said. "Mosquitor is real trustworthy. Even if he does say the 'b' word way too much."

"Okay," Adora said.

"You guys hungry...?" Scorpia said.

"I am, very!" Sea Hawk said.

"Cool! 'Cause I am too and I'm really nervous and I haven't eaten yet but I think I'm calming down and oh boy oh boy I am starving. So we're having lunch together! Isn't that nice?"  
Scorpia sat down and a pair of serkhet walked in behind her, setting a massive charcuterie board with a dozen varieties of meat, a dozen more of cheese, and an entire loaf of black bread with a pot of butter.

"Enjoy," Scorpia said, picking up a hefty knife designed to be held snugly between pincers.

"I'll..." Adora said. "...I'll have some, fuck it. Which one of these is made from breast milk?"

Sea Hawk popped a cube into his mouth. "Is it this?" he said. "This has a distinctive sort of flavor I haven't felt before in a cheese."

"Oh, no, that's just some gouda," Scorpia said.

In truth, though neither Adora nor Sea Hawk learned until well after the fact, every dairy product on the board was made with Serkhet milk.

* * *

Not halfway to Modulok's lair, Gloom reminded Mosquitor that someone had to file the paperwork and someone had to deal with Modulok. Mosquitor took the coward's way out and fled to the nearest notary to file out the ins and outs. Better to break it to Hordak that one of his own--oh, right, Catra, so that made two--had been left to the Rebellion than have to deal with their surgeon.

The little party halted in front of the door to Modulok's laboratory. It was an enormous docking port in an open-air landing strip for hovecraft, the better to offload new hires with a quickness. Gloom hit the doorbell--an actual doorbell, as if transplanted from a nice urban home to the middle of the Fright Zone--and took his place.

The docking door shuddered open. On one end, Gloom, the two guards, and the bound Glimmer were revealed; on the other, a two-legged, three-armed, one-headed portion of Modulok and Multibot stood, Shadow Weaver at his side.

Gloom stepped forward. "Mother," he said.

"Son," Shadow Weaver said. She held a small object in her hand, a little squeezing-gadget. "It has been too long."

"Before we take one step further," he said, "I have a question to ask of you."

She sighed. "Let me guess. Is it as to the legitimacy of your parentage?"

Gloom's grip on the Sword of Protection tightened. He held it in front of him, tip planted firmly into the cold metal floor--in fact, digging a bit into the floor. "Glimmer said that my father was thirteen when he sired me. Is this true?"

"Gloomy, child, age is just a number. He was a brilliant sorcerer, and he trusted me--"

"My dad wanted to _kill himself_ because of you," Glimmer said.

"I'm sure your mother--"

"When I was six I walked in on him ready to kill himself... because of _you_. He was in therapy all my life, _because of you_. He was your  _student_  and he was a  _kid_ you sick piece of shi--" One of the guards moved to activate a switch on the talent suppressor, and Gloom blasted him with poison. The guard fell back, then collapsed, curling up in fetal agony. The other guard decided discretion was the better half of valor and ran for it.

"Surely your devil of a mother taught him guilt," Shadow Weaver said, nonplussed. "It was not my fault that she took his--"

Gloom lifted the Sword of Protection--suddenly it was not any heavier than a wooden training waster, practically begging to be used--and reared back for a mighty swing at Shadow Weaver.  
She squeezed the little device and he froze in place, his momentum arrested, the Sword of Protection humming in his grip like a trapped fly.

"Gloom!" Glimmer said. "Hang tight--" She tried to teleport. The red light intensified around her, and a painful electric shock stroked through her from crown to heel. " _Aaaagh_! Damn you, Shadow Weaver!"

Shadow Weaver hovered closer to her son. She held out her free hand and touched his face. "It is a shame that you have been mistreated so," Shadow Weaver said. Her hand slid down to his neck; from there into his vest, to touch his chest. She could feel him cringe, could see his jaw try to move. She commanded him to relax. It only helped so much. "You need to be shown the right way of things. You need to be reminded about who is most important to you in your life... and by the Treader in Dust, you need a shave."

Modulok stepped forward. Attached to his right shoulder was a limb which had no name, a connector that was neither hip nor shoulder but attached two arms there, one a biological, two-clawed hand, the other a precision mechanical instrument, one of Multibot's limbs. The limb flexed, and a beautiful shaving razor popped into its padded fingers. It flicked the blade open.  
Glimmer closed her eyes and tried to teleport, again, and again, the shocks intensifying each time, 'til the agony was too great and she fell slack in her chains.

Even without any sort of oil or cream, with Multibot's mechanical grace the razor shaved Tomb Gloom's face smooth as a lamb, his whiskers less shorn away and more gently brushed aside, as if they were just laid on his face. Modulok pinched one of Gloom's boyish cheeks. "There," he said. "As you like it, friend."

"You're not so bad after all," Shadow Weaver said. She lifted her mask, revealing the hideousness of her mouth; softly, she licked her son's cheek, tasting his warm skin and his hot, copious tears.

"Go. Take the princess. Have your fun."

"Ah..." Modulok said. "What a precious reunion. Take your time--my house is yours. As they say, however, if the lab is a-rocking, I must request you not come a-knocking." He took the transport rig set up for Glimmer; as it began to move, she shook herself awake and tried to teleport once more, the shock zapping even Modulok.

"That won't do," Shadow Weaver said, commanding her son drop the sword. He held out his arm and fired a blast of toxic smoke at Glimmer. She held her breath, she closed her eyes, she tried to magick herself free; and she had nowhere to go, and nowhere to run, and no hope, no hope at all, and succumbed in time.

"Thank you once more," Modulok said, wheeling her inside.

Shadow Weaver bid Tomb Gloom step into Modulok's lair. The door shut.

The Sword of Protection lay impotent on the airship, valuable beyond compare, necessary beyond anyone present's ability to understand, and for the time, abandoned.

If the sword has something like a mind--and it is a thing of miracles, an Apex Designation Combat Spindle, half of the Sword of HE, the dynastic weapon of King Grayskull, drawing power from the Dwell of Souls Itself, so surely it has something like a mind, if not something like a soul--it must have known the horror of its circumstances, the despair of its wielder and the despair of those its wielder cared about.

If the Sword of Protection can weep, surely it must have then.

* * *

It didn't take long for Catra to surface from the depths of Perfuma's injection. Before long, with Angella's blessing, the team made their plans, manned a skimmer, and set out for the Fright Zone on a mission of rescue.

By then, Modulok was ready to operate.

* * *

Glimmer woke up. The first thing she smelled was a faint but pungent cleaning agent; it made her eyes water, tears slipping through her closed eyelids. She was lying face-down on an uncomfortable bed, one that was really nothing but a number of supports for her neck, her arms, a little pad under her belly, some more keeping her legs clamped in place.

She heard something moving around her--tapping, scratching against the floor, the rustle of bodies being dragged. There was a presence here--there were presences around her. And someone was singing along to the humming.

[A hymn.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZ9TlrjIUs)

She tried to lift her head. No go. She tried to teleport; she felt a hideous shock pulse through her system, like a full-body taser, low-intensity, but it was a charge she could feel in her teeth, crackled from heel to sole. She whimpered, and found that she could not open her mouth to pant.

"Mm... damnation," the singer said. The humming continued.

She heard footsteps. She teleported again, failed again, and in the exhausted, pained flush after, whoever stepped forward jabbed her in the neck with a pneumo injector. Icy pain flooded her system.

"Too much mana," the singer said. "That will purge you quite well, child."

"Stop..." Glimmer said. She could just barely force the words out of her mouth. Moving her tongue felt like trying to lift a weight. She couldn't look up, though now at last she deigned open her eyes.

The singer stepped in front of her. At last she could truly take in his appearance.

He was humanoid, somewhat. It was difficult to tell what was clothing and what was his flesh, for it was all rippling, ant-red chitin, with bands of black and mottles of green. His left arm was muscular, ending in a five-fingered hand, not unlike her own; the right... limb-complex, with its not-hip not-shoulder, had a chitinous arm ending in a two-fingered pincer and a nauseating yellow mechanical limb ending in a padded nipper. He examined her with enormous, jade-green eyes set with swimming black pupils like a praying mantis's. Small antennae branched from his brows.

"I don't believe we have been formally introduced," he said. "You have heard the name, surely. But now you see the man. I am Modulok."

The humming ceased. A second head, with gigantic, slit-pupiled eyes and an ear-to-ear smirk of manic intensity--a literal ear-to-ear grin, nearly bisecting his head--stepped into view, attached directly to a pair of hips with a clawed leg and a pincer-arm to match the one on Modulok's right. "I still am Modulok," he said.

"And this too is Modulok," rasped a groin, attached to another humanoid arm. No head. She didn't see what was making the sound and she didn't want to know.

The room was full of Modulok. Arms, legs, torsos. Some were fleshy, some chitinous; there were many tones of machine, all crawling, shambling, stepping together. All of it was Modulok. The horror of it overwhelmed her senses and she silently wept.

"Shhh," said the Modulok with a full body. He pressed a finger to her mouth. "Relax. Don't struggle. I am very good at what I do, you can rest assured. And it won't be long at all if you should be still."

She tried to struggle.

She was aware of her bones; she felt suspended in her muscles, unconnected by tendons. She had her tongue and her eyelids and to some degree her throat. A terror rose in her brain; she knew what it was but would not name it, lest it happen.

Hands rested on her back, though none of the Moduloks before her had moved from their positions. The disembodied hands were feeling for her wings.

They slid nails and talons around the edges of her wings, feeling for the seam where they indented her skin; they rubbed a lineament against the seam, their slicked nails working to pry her wings free at last. It was a sensation of horrible intimacy and all she could do was whimper.

The bodied Modulok held her head steady; she heard the soft, shuddering breath of the headless Modulok ahead of the low buzz of a set of electric shears. Modulok-hands took and pulled her hair, and the buzzing turned into the gnawing sound of clippers hard at work cutting. In minutes he had shorn her hair to stubble, and her horror at that was cut short by the pain of one wing being pulled from her back.

She screamed, the scream endless and wailing as Modulok flexed her freed wing, warming up joints that had never been used, feathers bristling, new and unbent flesh wrinkling for the first time. It distracted her from the feeling of Modulok rubbing down her scalp and brows with shaving oil.

She didn't even register Modulok shaving away the last of her stubble til her head was pale and bare--the liberation of her second wing took her mind away. When the hands were done flexing them, they began to clean her wings with warm water and a faintly stinging soap. Modulok by then had finished shaving away her eyebrows.

He had never stopped humming, singing to himself.

The pain had abated. The terror never left, of course, even as the pain assaulting her wings was replaced with a knowing comfort, her sore wings massaged with soapy water, the pale, tender patches of back-skin touched for the first time in years.

She opened her eyes again, unaware she had closed them, and saw Modulok, the main-body Modulok, wiping the razor clean. It was a perfectly ordinary, if high-quality razor, quality steel for the blade, elk-horn for the handle, something like her father had once shaved with. He ran the blade along a strop.

"Hmm, hmm..." he said. "Do you have any artistic tendencies, Ms. Morningstar?"

She had no articulate response. What was there to such a statement, in this place, by something like that?

"It is good to warm up," he said. "The orchestra must ensure the instruments are in tune, the people in time. We have a busy day ahead, Ms. Morningstar! I have never had an apport Talent in my studio, and your potential is great." He stroked her face with his two-fingered pincer. "I must be sure I am limber and precise. Any work may be my masterpiece. And so, I must approach every work with the idea it may become my life's work."

She tried to teleport. Nothing. Just the flat body-signal of emptiness.

"Don't be too afraid. We will be testing your apportation... later. You won't be empty for long. And you will have purpose, and you will be beautiful for Hordak." He pat her bald head, stepped away to her side, and took her wing in his hand, his fingered hand. He felt where the wing met her back, the joint attaching it to her shoulder blade.

He pressed the shaving razor against the joint and began to cut.

* * *

"Heaven's cold beneath my feet."

\--ibid.

 


	9. The Believers

"Hands and knees, we all atone

Path is paved with blood and bone."

\--"[The Believers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPnFnobccfI)," How To Destroy Angels

* * *

The New Breakroom was Lonnie's favorite breakroom for one good reason: you don't fight in there.  You literally can't.  Or at least you really goddamn shouldn't.

You see, the New Breakroom had once been a secondary armory. It was where some of the funner, more specialized weapons lived: the heavy plasma projectors and torch-lances that would blind you if you didn't have the right helmets with the proper eye protection; the MuRAL--the Multi-Role Active Launcher, which could take any kind of warhead you fed it and kick it at the target you painted with reasonable accuracy; good-old-fashioned pump-action shotguns, versatile and intimidating and still capable of magically transforming a baseline target's head into a savory pudding; the razor whips, the mike wands and mike rifles and eye-eaters and devil bores.

One day any weapon brought into the armory turned alive. All the weapons had a very disdainful opinion of being alive. The weapons were smart enough to wait to strike, and that was when accounts started breaking down: between concussions, survivors, drugs, and liars, it was hard to pinpoint if there was one massive rebellion or a long string of accidents. Some say it began the day Tung Lashor quit his post for good and buggered off to the Crimson Wastes, probably to die; others that it was how they lost an entire year's worth of graduates in one bloody mission; others that it was just another shitty day in the Fright Zone, which did this sort of thing all the goddamn time.

Long story short: weapons were not allowed in the New Breakroom, even knives or pipes cut at an angle. (It was said, more often whispered, that dragging out a fistfight in the new breakroom too long would mean your hands now no longer saw you as their boss.) Some nights the hallway leading to the New Breakroom got pretty bloody, but in its walls she could count on being able to watch some goddamn television, read a goddamn book, or just exist without having to think about life or Kyle for a few minutes.

So when she saw Kyle about to step into the New Breakroom with the fucking sword of the She-Ra she dropped her coffee and crossed the gap between her table and the door in three massive strides and tackled him to the ground.

"What the hell?" he said, not even angry. He looked like he had been recently very sick.

"Why the fuck would you bring that sword into the Alive Weapon Room?!" Lonnie shouted right in his face. "Why do you even have it?!"

Kyle cringed away from her. She could feel his heart pounding, the little pussy.

"Gloom absolutely did not give that to you because you're an incompetent piece of shit. Where is he and what did he do with it? And why did you almost bring it into the room that makes weapons turn alive?! Huh?!"

"I... forgot..." Kyle whimpered.

"Of course you did! Fuck." She pushed off of him and went for the Sword of Protection. "Where's Gloom? I didn't hear that part." She assumed the correct lifting stance and hefted the sword off the ground; it was absurdly heavy. No way anyone who wasn't the She-Ra could carry this. Who carried it for Adora, then?

"He... he poisoned me... I was... I came to, and the door was locked, and the sword... it was on the ground..."

"So you're keeping it warm for him. Sure." Lonnie propped the sword against the wall. "I'm finishing my drink, you do not let that out of your sight. Okay?"

"Okay," Kyle said.

She flipped him off and stepped back into the New Breakroom.

Kyle unfolded at last, crawling towards the sword. He crawled up the wall and put his hand on its pommel; the blade moved light and easy in his hands, like a training blade for a shortsword. He wondered where Rogelio was. Rogelio wasn't a name-caller--owing to being mute, he supposed--and when he was around Kyle he tended more towards shoulder-touches, nuzzles, and hugs. He hesitated to think of him as a friend; without the capacity for words, how could he tell?

But he felt safer with Rogelio around. With a thing like this in his care, he felt more vulnerable than ev--

His communicator went off, ringing the ominous three-note tone of an order from a Force Captain.

He dug it out of his pocket and answered. "Private first class Kyle, reporting."

"Kyle, hey," Catra said.

He blinked. "Catra?! You're alright?"

"Kind of. I had to beat a lot of ass. Got a new arm, so that's nice. Also, I got some more P-O-Ws, so bonus!"

"Oh, that's good! Good to hear," Kyle said. "Where are you? You're back at the Fright Zone?"

"Yeah, in Lambspoke Branch. I'm in the exercise yard out by the Manitsaur husk."

There was a voice slightly muffled by distance: "Oh, so that's a Manitsaur? Holy crap!"

Catra shushed violently. "Get us in, okay? It's been a long-ass walk and I'm really tired. And I need to get to Hordak quick. Et cetera. Got it?"

"I do!" Kyle said. "I do. I'll be there as soon as Lonnie says I can be there."

* * *

If she could, Catra would have screamed into the foul, toxic sky right then and there. But she had to wait a minute.

"...okay. See you soon. Don't be long, soldier."

She waited for Kyle to mumble a farewell, hung up, and screamed, at last, into the disgusting skies above the Fright Zone.

"Is the plan in danger?" Bow said. He was without his bow and quiver, but really, Catra was just keeping them warm for him. He was seated by the Mantisaur husk. At last, they found what the hell the Mantisaur was: a praying mantis the size of a pickup truck.

"No," Catra said, unclenching her fists. "Just that Kyle is being a total goddamn pushover, again." She crouched next to Bow, rocking on her toes, arms crossed over her knees. She slid her left arm off of her bionic right after a few moments.

"Who's Kyle, again?" Bow said.

"Blond guy, yea high," she vaguely gestured above her head, "looks like he doesn't eat enough. 'Cause he doesn't. 'Cause people like to roll him for his rations."

"Did you ever roll him for his rations?" Bow said.

"...yeah," Catra said. "It's easy and fun."

Bow mumbled to himself. Now's not a good time to moralize, he thought.

"So, there's no telling how long we're gonna be here," Bow said. "Did you bring any cards?"

"Do one of these arrows shoot a deck of cards?" Catra said.

"No... but one should. That's a good idea. The calling card shot."

"You're welcome. That one's on the house."

Bow inched away from a little spur on the Manitsaur's husk, one he hadn't realized was digging into his lower back until he focused on it. "I'm always looking for new ideas. Got any more things you'd like to see on the end of a--shaft. Well, that sounded wrong."

"Warning in advance," Catra said, "I'm gay."

"Me too," Bow said. "...maybe a little bit bi for abs."

"Bastet's tits," Catra said. " _Abs_."

In the kind of synch only two people who share a kink can manage, they executed a perfect fistbump.

"...ow," Bow said, shaking his hand.

"Yeah," Catra said, flexing her cyberlimb. "Still getting used to this."

* * *

Mermista slipped. "Shit!" she said, smacking onto the sheet of ice hovering above the sewer water.

"I said 'slow and steady,' I meant it," Frosta said, leading the charge--well, the crawl--through the sewers of the Fright Zone. "You can turn into part fish, right? Can you do a sort of--what's it called--like a seal thing? Flop around like a seal? They can manage themselves on ice pretty well."

"...worth a shot." Mermista transformed her legs into a powerful fish tail and gave a slither a go. Her scales glided along the ice at a decent clip. "Okay, feeling more secure. Okay, yeah. Good call, kid."

"'No, don't go, you have a serious head wound,'" Frosta said.

"We all make mistakes. And, to be fair, you have a pretty serious head wound."

"See? Motivation. If I fall in that water I'll get infected and die of sepsis, and I really don't want to die of sepsis."

"If it's any consolation," Mermista said, "this doesn't smell like black water. It's more like gray water. Soap, food scraps... maybe some pee."

" _Majestic_."

"It wasn't _my_ plan. Blame the cat."

"I already was."

Frosta checked the map Catra had drawn back at Brightmoon. It was shockingly detailed given it was a map of a sewer complex, including warnings for places where monsters tended to spawn. Between the two of them the few monsters that had sloshed out of the pisswater and clamored from the shadows had been easy takings. Naturally this put both of them ill-at-ease.

"Here," Frosta said, coming to a stop below a grate. The grate, she noticed, was not only soaked with rust but stained brown. "So... what now?"

Mermista slid into a seated position. "That's a damn good question. I presume we--"

Someone stepped over the grate. "Hello?" a Hordesman said. "Who's down there? Is it--ah, shit, Leech, sir, is it you?"

After a moment, Mermista said, "Yes, cadet." She spoke in a low growl.

"...oh, God, he talks..."  The Hordesman straightened up and saluted. "Leech, sir, I regret to inform you that the prisoner you wanted to drain has already been brought to Hordak and fed upon."

"It's alright," Mermista said. "You win some, you lose some. Hordak's gotta get in his... sucky-sucky."

The Hordesman audibly gulped. "We have been asked not to say that, sir. On penalty of being summarily executed."

"Do I sound like I care, bitch?" Mermista said. "What about the other two guards? And the princesses?"

"The princesses have been handled by Tomb Gloom and Scorpia, sir. The other two guards are still awaiting processing."

"How about this," Mermista said. "Bring me the two guards, and I won't reach up through the sewers and eat you instead. How's that sound?"

"I... I can arrange for that, sir, though I imagine Hordak may be--"

"Hey," Mermista said. "Where I come from, we have a saying: 'it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.'"

"...they say that in the sewers, sir?"

"Yes. ... And give the other prisoners an extra... fruit cup. Or something. And... uh..."

Frosta whispered a suggestion in her ear. Mermista felt a sick twinge in her stomach. "The hell do you know about that, child?" she whispered.

"I'm not a child, I'm 11 and--"

"Yes, sir?" the Hordesman said.

"I changed my mind. Keep up the good work. ... I love you."

"I... I love you too, sir," the Hordesman said, and snuck off.

"Well," Mermista said, sotto voce, "that's one Bluff check passed."

* * *

Things were devolving rapidly in the dungeon of the Palace of the Ebon Sting.

Firstly, the timer went off and rang a truly nerve-twisting alarm. Sea Hawk stopped in his tracks abruptly, and his expression shifted from focus to fury.

"Love of the gods, m'am!" Sea Hawk said, flicking sweat from his brow with a contemptive swipe, "Was that not the Tarantella I have just danced? Was the clue somehow too opaque?!"

"Well, I'm..." Scorpia swallowed hard. "I... I'm..." Tears welled in her eyes, and in spite of her years of bitter conditioning the dam burst immediately. "I can't dance! I can't dance! Oh, Atlach-Nacha, mother of spiders and fun wine-aunt of scorpions, I can't dance worth a da-ha-ha-haaaamn!" She clung onto Adora, who had not been an enthusiastic participant in charades from the get-go, and squeezed tight.

"My goodness, that's rough," Adora said. "Isn't dancing like, the big thing in Serkhet culture?"

"It's the o-ho-ho-o-only thing!" Scorpia said, sobbing into Adora's chest to Adora's intense dismay.

"It appears we have discovered a potent psychological vulnerability," Sea Hawk whispered into Adora's ear. "I would bet that we can exploit this opportunity to our satisfaction!"

"Come again?" Adora whispered back. Scorpia was really not quiet, at all.

After a little back-and-forth, a plan emerged.

"Hey," Adora said. "Hey, Scorpia."

Scorpia sniffled. "Y-yeah?"

"How about we teach you how to dance?" Adora said. "I've been taking secret devil lessons at Brightmoon. I'm freakin' aces at it. I just need a little more room than what we could--I mean--you know, they're guaranteed unholy dance moves taught to me by Queen Angella herself."

"Those are real?" Scorpia said. "Did she actually--"

"The rumors are all true," Adora said. "Every last one. These are the most forbidden dances imaginable."

"Count me in, too," Sea Hawk said.

"Obviously I can't do them indoors, because they will desanctify your castle."

"Not desanctify!" Scorpia said. "We very laboriously dedicate the whole place to Atlach-Nacha every year!"

"'Zzackly. So let's get a move on, eh?"

"Yes!" Scorpia said. "Obviously!"

* * *

Perfuma knocked. "Remember," she said, "I will handle the speech portion of the plan, and you will... Entrapta?"

Entrapta popped out of the hood of a scorpion-shaped hovercraft, one of the smaller personnel-carrier types she'd heard so much about. "Hi!" she said. "I didn't see anybody in the ship so I figured it was okay if I--"

Perfuma hissed at her as if she were a misbehaving cat. "Please! Now is not the time! Lives are on the line, and we are--" She threw hands at the massive edifice of the Palace of the Ebon Sting; one of the eyes on its surface drifted its gaze down at her, perhaps offended by the gesturing. "--in the depths of enemy territory! If you cannot behave yourself, then--"

The doors groaned and began to clatter upward. Perfuma squealed in shock, adjusted her dress, and put on a winning smile, ready to fake a surrender. She conjured a length of kudzu around Entrapta and bid it crawl her over; Entrapta held on to the engine with both ponytails before finally surrendering, wagering that she could sneak in some extra tinker-time while Perfuma was doing her part in the thing.

Perfuma disintegrated the kudzu back into mana just as the ponderous doors opened on Sea Hawk and Adora flanking Scorpia. Scorpia was between them, puffy-faced and red-eyed and with a claw on each one's shoulder. Adora was in suppression vambraces. Sea Hawk wasn't.

"...Hello!" Perfuma said.

"Hi!" Entrapta said.

"Hey there," Scorpia said, smiling weakly.

"The hell?" Adora said.

"I'm so--uh--" Perfuma said, "I'm so sur--surprised to see you here, Adora! We were in the process of, uh--"

"We brought Dragstor's head!" Entrapta said, holding out exactly that.

"Really?" Scorpia said. "That's so sweet of you. It can't have been easy getting past all the security."

"Oh, no, Catra let us in," Entrapta said before Perfuma could stop her.

"Catra's back?!" Scorpia said, perking up. "And--wait, what was tha--"

Perfuma gestured and Scorpia's mouth filled with tremendously bitter-tasting seeds. It was not the least-sexual thing Perfuma could do on short notice, but it definitely got Scorpia distracted, doubling over and hacking. A pair of small claws pushed out of her mouth; they were draped with sticky black seeds she struggled to scrape off with all four of her claws.

Adora darted forward, and Sea Hawk followed suit. Entrapta pointed at the transport and ran for it; lacking any other plan, the rest of them followed. Entrapta flung her way into the transport's driver-side window--smashing it open with Dragstor's head first--and ripped off a panel to start hotwiring it.

Perfuma knocked at the troop-entry door, polite but insistent.

Entrapta powered up the transport; she felt it lift off the ground a foot or so. "Oooh. I've never flown something before... this could be very interesting. Dragstor, what's your take on this thing's maneuverability?"

Dragstor, whose head landed on the floor between two pilot chairs, continued to be in a coma.

"Hrrm. Guess we're gonna have to find that ou--"

Perfuma's knocking became much more insistent and much less polite.

"Oh, right!"

She hit a few buttons, turning on a dehumidifier, a radio, and an overhead blacklight before finally opening the passenger door. The wrong one first, then the right one!

Adora flung herself in first, Sea Hawk needlessly carrying Perfuma inside after. Sea Hawk said, "Make like an oak struck by a mighty bolt of lightning and split, friend!"

"Yep-a-doodle!" Entrapta said, pulling up on the controls.

The hovercraft tilted backwards, gently thumping its tail section on the ground. The impact reverberated through the entire craft.

"Okay, wrong rising controls..." Entrapta said, feeling around with hands and ponytails alike. "Let's see what this will..."

"Hurry the _hell_ up!" Perfuma said.

"I'm tryin', _dang_ , lady!" Entrapta said, and at last figured out how to get the hovercraft into the air. A hand entered her peripheral vision, hitting the door conrols just before the hovercraft took to speed. Entrapta screamed. "Oh crap, who was--oh, it's you, pirate guy."

"Hello!" Sea Hawk said. "I didn't want us to all fall out."

"That's cool of you," Entrapta said. "Do you know how to fly one of these?"

"Nope," Sea Hawk said.

Perfuma placed her hands on Adora's cuffs and grew a thick shaft of hardwood in the lock. She gave the haft a twist and the cuffs opened. Adora sighed, rubbing her sore arms. The massive vambrace-like cuffs didn't chew the wrists like more conventional cuffs did, but they weren't exactly opera gloves. "Thank you," Adora said.

"Are you cold?" Perfuma said. "Your dress doesn't look very comfortable in this context."

"It's fine," Adora said darkly. "What's the plan?"

"Pick up the other two teams and then exit the Fright Zone at sped," Perfuma said. "Though, perhaps we should lay low a moment. We weren't anticipating this phase of the plan to go so--smoothly."

"Speaking of smoothly. What the hell did you do to Scorpia? It took us like five damn minutes to get off the ground, I figured she'd..."

Perfuma smiled sheepishly. "I gave her a heroic dose of jimsonweed. If I guessed her weight right, she'll be out about ten hours."

"...if you didn't?"

"If she's heavier than I expect... ten minutes." She looked down at her hands as if examining nonexistent nail polish. "Or if she's lighter, two weeks. And she'll need new kidneys... two pairs of new kidneys."

"Who else is here?" Adora said, trying not to imagine what would require that many new kidneys.

* * *

Back on the ground, Rapthorne and Hastings rushed through the open gates, spears in hand. "Princess Scorpia!" Rapthorne said. "What in the name of the Dream-Weaver is going on?"

Scorpia jumped, startled. "Who's there?" she said. Her pupils were pinpricks. Her chelicerae were out of her mouth and dripping with saliva and little black seeds. "...hello?" she said. Her words continued to be muffled by her mouthparts.

Rapthorne approached slowly. "I'm coming closer to you, princess," he said. He unhooked a light from his belt and clenched it in his claws, shining it in the princess's eyes. "I think she's been drugged," he said.

Scorpia shrieked and seized Rapthorne's claw. She stung him in the neck with the trademark half-dose of venom and flung him at Hawthorne, knocking him down in a noisy heap (what with all the armor and all). She turned to run, but the snake caught up with her, climbing up her legs and around her claws. She snatched it up, but it seethed in her grasp, turning its three-lobed burning eye at her face.

It shrieked: "YOU ARE IMPRISONED IN NOTHINGNESS. THE VOID OF DESPONDOS LICKS AT YOUR HEELS. SHE DOESN'T LOVE YOU, SCORPIA... SHE WILL NEVER WILL."

"You're lying," Scorpia said, weeping profusely, and ripping the serpent in half. "You're lying!"

"LOVELESS LUMPEN CHILD," the serpent said from two mouths, slithering from her claws and into the dirt.

"I'm not--I'm not lumpy!" Scorpia said. "I can't dance but I'm not..." She felt her biceps bulge, her abdominals and her thighs. "Ohhh no I'm lumpy! I'm lumpy-y-y-y!"

She ran weeping back into the castle, even though it was full of spiders.

Perfuma's weight-guess was off by a quarter of a pound; she'd be under for a couple of days and only need one new kidney.

* * *

"Open your eyes, sweetie," Modulok said. "[Please](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmPkD_IMe18)."

Glimmer complied. Going with what he said made the pain ebb. He'd even started anesthetizing after the first time she lost consciousness. It numbed the pain, though she could feel him rooting around. She was so far gone that she could look at one of her own organs held cupped in the hands of a pair of disembodied arms.

It was soft, a rich red-brown in color, and shaped like a comma. Modulok squeezed it gently; it was soft and it seeped blood.

"The spleen," Modulok said. "I always found this to be such a beautiful organ. It purges the blood of disease. You'd catch so many colds if not for this hard-working beauty. You won't need it anymore, of course. But I'd hate for you to say goodbye without ever really getting to know it."

Glimmer didn't make a sound. She'd blown out her voice an hour ago, anyway. She just stared, barely comprehending.

Modulok pressed the organ to his thin, near-nonexistent lips, and Glimmer wished again that she would just die. "Your task is done, little bean." His arms set the spleen into a small container, which shut tight, clicked, and chimed. "This will go to Hordak. He has been known to squeeze the blood from these. The taste is foul, but pleasantly so, or so I have heard. You are a princess, one with Talent; I am sure he'll enjoy it."

Glimmer closed her eyes again.

"I am just about done with your body, now. I can't take too much away or your Talent won't recognize what's been done to it." He stepped away from the operating platform to switch his arms for a fresher pair.

His other head leaned in close to her ear.

"The brain surgery comes next," he said. "The control chip for all those wonderful new functions. The command chip for Shadow Weaver... the same that's in your half-brother. Sibling bonds. Isn't it beautiful, Blast Attak?"

Glimmer found the strength to cry again.

Modulok wiped the tears from her cheeks, licking his fingers to taste them. "Mm. Good. Still aware. Still comprehending. I'll need you to be both."

* * *

All in all, Lonnie had been much easier to work with than Catra anticipated, right up to the skiff crash.

The skiff shrieked as its hull scraped the side of a building. The not-quite-crash gave Lonnie the advantage, and so she tightened her grip on Catra's waist and jumped backwards, arching Catra backwards. Catra caught herself on her hands before smacking her head into the deck, but Lonnie just turned and forced Catra onto her belly, knocking the wind out of her. Catra readied her power talons, but Lonnie crawled on top of her and started punching her in the kidneys, one good punch at a time.

This gave Bow a clean shot at last; he drew, nocked, and loosed a tranq arrow at Lonnie's back. Lonnie felt something pinch into her shoulder blade, something numbing; she reached for it, found she couldn't quite get it, and fell promptly asleep. The smart arrowhead chirped and flooded the rest of the tranquilizer out of vents in the back, spilling down Lonnie's shirt. And so she would be out a while, but not killed.

"Nice," Catra said, crawling out from under Lonnie.

Kyle, who kept his nose out of the fight, babbled something neither Bow nor Catra could figure out. He maintained his death grip on the Sword of Protection, however.

"You're not steering?!" Catra said. "We freakin' told you--"

Bow lunged for the yoke and brought the skiff in for a landing. As they were now in the midst of one of the busier parts of the Fright Zone, this involved trying to fly casually between three-dimensional planes of traffic and into the alley that looked most-deserted and least-monster-infested.

He managed to get one out of three. There was something slithering behind a dumpster as the skiff ground to a stop.

"Alright," Catra said, popping her neck and flexing her cyberarm. "So now we're going to find a nice private place and..."

"Catra?" Kyle said.

"What?" Catra said.

"You could've just given us Bow. Then it... then it'd all be..."

"Well," Catra said, "maybe I didn't wanna give you Bow. How's that?"

"That's... treason?" Kyle said. "Blasphemy, minimum. You'll be crucified for that. Upside-down."

Catra stepped up to Lonnie, taller, healthier, and more machine than him. "That's if they catch me. Or believe you. Will they believe you, Lonnie, or are they just gonna ignore you, like we always did?"

"Lonnie," he said. "There's Lonnie."

"...eh. She's a bitch anyway." Catra held out her palm. "Sword."

Kyle gave her the Sword. She twirled it with her left hand--it was remarkably light, more like an over-long baton than a sword, though a baton wouldn't have made Kyle cringe in total fear for his life--and set it on her back like Adora did. To her surprise, it stuck fast, as if adhered to an invisible magnet.

"Thank you, Kyle. Remember, I had to fight you for this."

"Are we..." Bow gestured to the alley where there had been a monster.

"Naw, we're gonna run into the street and sing 'He Is.'" She vaulted over the guard rail and into the alley, popping her powered claws. Bow took a few arrows in hand and followed her, low to the ground and ready to loose at the first sign of trouble.

Kyle waited for his heart to feel like it wasn't about to burst out of his chest, then he checked on Lonnie. He rooted through her pockets and found, among her effects, a promissary note signed to him, for...

Oh, that was a lot of Hordemarks. The princess had been counted among his captures, and even divided between the absent Dragstor (but not with Catra, who was presumed dead) he now had quite a bit of walking-around money to his name.

"...you told me they taxed all of mine out," he said to Lonnie's still body. He looked around and, feeling a bit of bravery, kicked her in the ribs, full force. He heard a satisfying crack, and though she was in too deep to wake up, she stirred, and her breathing became more ragged.

"Serves you right," he said; and after a moment, he decided to take Lonnie's note too, and so he ran to the nearest bounty desk.

* * *

Between Entrapta and Sea Hawk and a small untapped supply of miracles, the rescue-Adora team had reached a secure place to land their transport, a nearly-vacant parking garage. Adora cracked open a compartment in the wall and pulled on a breastplate and boots, something to make her feel more secure than her prom dress. With Perfuma's help conjuring acid-dripping plants, she bleached away the Horde logo and scrawled She-Ra's starburst insignia in its place.

Mermista checked in first.

"Hey, guys," she said over Perfuma's comm. "No rush or anything, but we've got the surviving civilian kidnap-ees and I'm really tired of all the pisswater."

"According to the map!" Frosta said, leaning into the comm, "We're at the intersection of Church Hill and Skyview!"

Entrapta typed in the names in the ship's navicomputer. "That's five minutes from here with all the traffic safety limiters on! We can drop you guys off outside of town before we--"

"Wait, my comm's going off," Frosta said. The indistinct sounds of answering it happened, then a brief but heated exchange. "Hey, uh, Adora?"

"Yeah?" Adora said, leaning into Perfuma's comm.

"Do you know a Modulok?"

Adora's heart skipped a beat. "Yeah. I do."

"Catra says that your bro and Glimmer got dropped off at his place, and Shadow Weaver's there.

"...no..." Adora said.

"...so, are you not gonna pick us--"

"We're going after them now. There's no telling what kind of--what horrible thing he could be doing to them."

"Damn it," Frosta said.

"You, take the guards out of town. Mermista, take the map and look for 'Healing Hands' helipad. Catra probably wrote it down."

A brief silence. "Yeah, she did," Frosta said.

"Get moving. Now." Adora hit the "end" button. Perfuma nervously returned the phone to a waterproof pouch of tightly-woven leaves.

"So, not going to--" Entrapta said.

"I said Healing Hands and I meant it," Adora said, icy. "And get ready for a fight."

"...Shouldn't we wait for--" Perfuma said.

"The longer we wait the worse things might get. So get moving!"

"Roger dodger!" Entrapta said.

"On the way!" Sea Hawk said, needlessly.

"Modulok?" Perfuma said. "As in, the former Galen Nycroft?"

"The same," Adora said. "He did my brother's cybernetics. I bet he's behind his enhancile treatments, too... and if he's with Shadow Weaver... God, I don't know what to expect." She wiped sudden cold sweat from her brow. "How have you heard of him?"

"Some of his treatises and books have spread outside the Fright Zone," Perfuma said. "I've read them. He may very well be the finest doctor of enhancile medicine on Etheria... and profoundly and utterly evil. But if you know him personally, I... well, I presume you knew that already..." She blushed and fiddled with a knot of kudzu.

"Yeah." Adora nodded. "He's a sick fuck."

"Have you ever seen him form the Megabeast?"

"The what?"

* * *

"Well, then," Mermista said, "let's creatively interpret Adora's orders."

"Yeah, I'm coming with," Frosta said. "You guys want I should make you like an ice boat or something? ... I mean... I can't ask you to fight here for me. I'm a Talent, you're not, and we're as far behind enemy lines as it is possible to be."

The two guards--Xun, a man, and Uki, a woman--looked at each other, then pulled back the hoods on their armor and knelt on the ice platform they all stood on. "Your Highness," Uki said, "I will gladly fight and die for you."

"We've lost enough of ours to the Horde in cowardly ambushes," Xun said. "If we were fated to die here, through the cold comfort of Ithaqua may our final moments be in battle for the grace of our wounded princess."

"Thank you," Frosta said, placing her hands on their heads, Xun's shorn nearly bald, Uki's with robust black hair. "I'll do my best to protect you both."

"So," Mermista said, "the whole 'every second is precious' thing... we don't really care?"

"Right!" Frosta said, cracking her knuckles. "Let's go!"

* * *

Modulok slid the second chip in place on the probe; Modulok switched out the extruders on his 3D printer; and Modulok, with a Multibot limb for additional precision, pressed the tip of his monomolecular scalpel into the bared patch of skull. This was the most delicate and most beautiful part of the operation, the part to take the burden of thought and control from the newborn Blast-Attak and pass it on to her betters.

So, of course, [the alarm sounded](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvzIpkE_LMM). It was low, but at a frequency to make the fine bones in both complete sets of ears tingle. And of course it was capped off by one of Multibot's heads turning to him: "O Maker Mine, Shadow Weaver reports that Hordesman Kyle reports the encroachment of invaders from Brightmoon. Take up arms and be ready to defend your quarry."

"...duly noted," Modulok said. One of his more complete bodies pulled his head free from the four-armed stump crouched over Blast-Attak's head and planted it on itself. "Come, friends. Let us preserve our miracle."

In his official documents, Modulok called this form the Megabeast. It was a cute title, one that got across his idea quite adequately. But he daren't tell anyone what he really called it--the name the form wore in his many hearts, in his plural minds. People would think him mad, or at the very least somewhat blasphemous.

But it was what a simpler mind might call a true name, the real name of the form, a more true descriptor of what it felt to be.

Most of the body parts in the laboratory swarmed towards him, connecting one after the other after the other. When the form was complete, he touched the ceiling of his operating theater and pulled himself, piece by piece, into the emergency vents above. The elevator he would leave down here, the better to buy his remaining pieces time.

Those poor princesses. It would be greedy to try and claim more of them for himself. Shadow Weaver would want one; surely Hordak would have his share. Leech had been grousing for a POW to feed on for a while now, someone of Talent. Unlikely, that. And he had one already, a rare one that could finally test the blueprints he purchased from Lord Gr'asp. But... suppose this was a rout to end all routs. Suppose he asked Shadow Weaver very nicely.

There were so many things he could do with a princess.

And what princess could hope to stand against Godulok?

* * *

"Deface

deface

to the ground

and build another one."

\--"And The Sky Began To Scream," How To Destroy Angels

 


End file.
